“Why, Martin, you born ideot—­av’ she ain’t waiting for you this hour and more!”

“Thim that’s long waited for is always welcome when they do come,” replied Martin.

“Well afther all I’ve done for you!  Are you going in now?—­cause, av’ you don’t, I’ll go and tell her not to be tasing herself about you.  I’ll neither be art or part in any such schaming.”

“Schaming, is it, Meg?  Faith, it’d be a clever fellow’d beat you at that,” and, without waiting for his sister’s sharp reply, he walked into the little room where Anty was sitting.

“So, Anty, you wouldn’t come to mass?” he began.

“Maybe I’ll go next Sunday,” said she.

“It’s a long time since you missed mass before, I’m thinking.”

“Not since the Sunday afther father’s death.”

“It’s little you were thinking then how soon you’d be stopping down here with us at the inn.”

“That’s thrue for you, Martin, God knows.”

At this point of the conversation Martin stuck fast:  he did not know Rosalind’s recipe [29] for the difficulty a man feels, when he finds himself gravelled for conversation with his mistress; so he merely scratched his head, and thought hard to find what he’d say next.  I doubt whether the conviction, which was then strong on his mind, that Meg was listening at the keyhole to every word that passed, at all assisted him in the operation.  At last, some Muse came to his aid, and he made out another sentence.

[FOOTNOTE 29:  Rosalind’s recipe—­In As You Like It, Act III,
Sc. ii, Rosalind, disguised as a young man,
instructs Orlando to practice his wooing on her.]

“It was very odd my finding you down here, all ready before me, wasn’t it?”

“’Deed it was:  your mother was a very good woman to me that morning, anyhow.”

“And tell me now, Anty, do you like the inn?”

“’Deed I do—­but it’s quare, like.”

“How quare?”

“Why, having Meg and Jane here:  I wasn’t ever used to anyone to talk to, only just the servants.”

“You’ll have plenty always to talk to now—­eh, Anty?” and Martin tried a sweet look at his lady love.

“I’m shure I don’t know.  Av’ I’m only left quiet, that’s what I most care about.”

“But, Anty, tell me—­you don’t want always to be what you call quiet?”

“Oh! but I do—­why not?”

“But you don’t mane, Anty, that you wouldn’t like to have some kind of work to do—­some occupation, like?”

“Why, I wouldn’t like to be idle; but a person needn’t be idle because they’re quiet.”

“And that’s thrue, Anty.”  And Martin broke down again.

“There’d be a great crowd in chapel, I suppose?” said Anty.

“There was a great crowd.”

“And what was father Geoghegan preaching about?”

“Well, then, I didn’t mind.  To tell the truth, Anty, I came out most as soon as the preaching began; only I know he told the boys to pray that the liberathor might be got out of his throubles; and so they should—­not that there’s much to throuble him, as far as the verdict’s concerned.”