5
“I’m going to Belfast to-night, Hannah,” he said when he had been at home a few weeks. “I want to catch an early train to Dublin to-morrow.”
“Yes,” she said.
“When I come back, I shall bring my wife with me!”
“God bless us and save us,” she exclaimed, “it’ll be quare to think of you with a wife, an’ it on’y the other day since you were a child, an’ me skelpin’ you for provokin’ me. Well, I’ll have the house ready for yous both when you come!”
“Will you tell Matier to harness the horse....”
“I’ll tell him this minute. That man’s near demented mad at the thought of you marryin’. ‘Be the hokey O!’ he says whenever I go a-near him, an’ then he starts laughin’ an’ tellin’ me it’s the great news altogether. ‘I wish,’ says he, ‘the oul’ lad was alive. He’d be makin’ hell’s blazes for joy!’ Och, he’s cracked, that fella. I tell him many’s the time it’s in the asylum he should be, but sure, you might as well talk to the potstick as talk to him. He’ll drive you to the station with a heart an’ a han’, and the capers of him when you both come back’ll be like nothin’ on God’s earth!”
“So long as he doesn’t capsize us both into the ditch!...”
“Him capsize you! I’d warm his lug for him if he dar’d to do such a thing!...”