The news, however, quickly reached the kitchen and
its lazy crowd; and the inn door and its constant
loungers; and was readily and gladly credited in both
places.
Crone after crone, and cripple after cripple, hurried
into the shop, to congratulate the angry widow on
“masther Martin’s luck; and warn’t
he worthy of it, the handsome jewel—and
wouldn’t he look the gintleman, every inch of
him?” and Sally expatiated greatly on it in the
kitchen, and drank both their healths in an extra
pot of tea, and Kate grinned her delight, and Jack
the ostler, who took care of Martin’s horse,
boasted loudly of it in the street, declaring that
“it was a good thing enough for Anty Lynch,
with all her money, to get a husband at all out of
the Kellys, for the divil a know any one knowed in
the counthry where the Lynchs come from; but every
one knowed who the Kellys wor—and Martin
wasn’t that far from the lord himself.”
There was great commotion, during the whole day, at
the inn. Some said Martin had gone to town to
buy furniture; others, that he had done so to prove
the will. One suggested that he’d surely
have to fight Barry, and another prayed that “if
he did, he might kill the blackguard, and have all
the fortin to himself, out and out, God bless him!”
The great news was not long before it reached the
ears of one not disposed to receive the information
with much satisfaction, and this was Barry Lynch,
the proposed bride’s amiable brother. The
medium through which he first heard it was not one
likely to add to his good humour. Jacky, the
fool, had for many years been attached to the Kelly’s
Court family; that is to say, he had attached himself
to it, by getting his food in the kitchen, and calling
himself the lord’s fool. But, latterly,
he had quarrelled with Kelly’s Court, and had
insisted on being Sim Lynch’s fool, much to
the chagrin of that old man; and, since his death,
he had nearly maddened Barry by following him through
the street, and being continually found at the house-door
when he went out. Jack’s attendance was
certainly dictated by affection rather than any mercenary
views, for he never got a scrap out of the Dunmore
House kitchen, or a halfpenny from his new patron.
But still, he was Barry’s fool; and, like other
fools, a desperate annoyance to his master.
On the day in question, as young Mr. Lynch was riding
out of the gate, about three in the afternoon, there,
as usual, was Jack.
“Now yer honour, Mr. Barry, darling, shure you
won’t forget Jacky to-day. You’ll
not forget your own fool, Mr. Barry?”
Barry did not condescend to answer this customary
appeal, but only looked at the poor ragged fellow
as though he’d like to flog the life out of
him.
“Shure your honour, Mr. Barry, isn’t this
the time then to open yer honour’s hand, when
Miss Anty, God bless her, is afther making sich a
great match for the family?—Glory be to
God!”
