54
SHIANA
Kate.—'It is after it is done that every act is understood,' Abbie. All the world can't beat a proverb.
Nora.—Whatever way he understood the thing when he was getting the purse, I suppose he understood it better when the whole country was marrying him without his knowledge to four different women, while he himself knew that there were only ten years between him and the fulfilment of the bargain he had made with the Black Man. If he had only looked before him when the angel gave him the warning! If I had been in his place, the three wishes I would have asked for would have been, plenty of money in this world, a long life in happiness, and the eternal life after it. Then he could have married Short Mary, or the Maid of the Liss—or even—Sive if he liked, independently of the Black Man and his tricks.
Sheila.—How do you know, Nora, that he wouldn't have chosen Nora of the Causeway?
Nora.—I think that "Sheila" was the name of the Maid of the Liss, and that she was the one he liked best.
Peg.—Whichever of them he liked best, Nora, I think he was sorry enough that he did not do as you would have done.
Nora.—He acted in a most absurd and blundering way. It wouldn't be easy for him to ask three wishes more useless than the three that he asked for. I don't know in the world what came over him. He was to have three wishes at his own choice and judgment, and he could have them without any condition or impediment, and he must needs go and trample them under foot,
