she’d have Cormac before the year was out. The ondaycency of such a thing made him furious at her.
He says to himself, half crying, “Why, then, bad cess to you for a shameless, red-haired, forward baggage, Bridget Hanlon, to be runnin’ afther the man, an’ throwing yourself in his way, an’ Eileen not yet cowld in her grave!” he says.
While he was saying them things to himself, McCarthy had been whuspering fierce to his wife, but what it was the stone-cutter said the friend of the fairies couldn’t hear. Eileen herself spoke clean enough in answer, for the faver gave her onnatural strength.
“Don’t think,” she says, “that it’s the first time this thought has come to me. Two months ago, whin I was sthrong an’ well an’ sittin’ happy as a meadowlark at your side, the same black shadow dhrif ted over me heart. The worst of it an’ the hardest to bear of all is that they’ll be in the right, for what good can I do for you when I’m undher the clay,” says she.
“It’s different with a woman. If you were taken an’ I left I’d wear your face in my heart through all me life, an’ ax for no sweeter company.”
