“Good man, Joe!” said Mr. O’Connor,
taking out his cigarette papers and pouch the better
to hide his emotion.
“What do you think of that, Crofton?”
cried Mr. Henchy. “Isn’t that fine?
What?”
Crofton said that it was a very fine piece of writing.
Mr Holohan, assistant secretary of the Eire
Abu Society, had been walking up and down Dublin for
nearly a month, with his hands and pockets full of
dirty pieces of paper, arranging about the series
of concerts. He had a game leg and for this his
friends called him Hoppy Holohan. He walked up
and down constantly, stood by the hour at street corners
arguing the point and made notes; but in the end it
was Mrs. Kearney who arranged everything.
Miss Devlin had become Mrs. Kearney out of spite.
She had been educated in a high-class convent, where
she had learned French and music. As she was
naturally pale and unbending in manner she made few
friends at school. When she came to the age of
marriage she was sent out to many houses, where her
playing and ivory manners were much admired.
She sat amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments,
waiting for some suitor to brave it and offer her
a brilliant life. But the young men whom she met
were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement,
trying to console her romantic desires by eating a
great deal of Turkish Delight in secret. However,
when she drew near the limit and her friends began
to loosen their tongues about her, she silenced them
by marrying Mr. Kearney, who was a bootmaker on Ormond
Quay.
He was much older than she. His conversation,
which was serious, took place at intervals in his
great brown beard. After the first year of married
life, Mrs. Kearney perceived that such a man would
wear better than a romantic person, but she never put
her own romantic ideas away. He was sober, thrifty
and pious; he went to the altar every first Friday,
sometimes with her, oftener by himself. But she
never weakened in her religion and was a good wife
to him. At some party in a strange house when
she lifted her eyebrow ever so slightly he stood up
to take his leave and, when his cough troubled him,
she put the eider-down quilt over his feet and made
a strong rum punch. For his part, he was a model
father. By paying a small sum every week into
a society, he ensured for both his daughters a dowry
of one hundred pounds each when they came to the age
of twenty-four. He sent the older daughter, Kathleen,
to a good convent, where she learned French and music,
and afterward paid her fees at the Academy. Every
year in the month of July Mrs. Kearney found occasion
to say to some friend:
“My good man is packing us off to Skerries for
a few weeks.”
If it was not Skerries it was Howth or Greystones.
