It must be a cold you got." "Oh, it's a terror, Ned," groaned Larry, as a twinge of pain passed over his weazened face. "I never had it as bad before. I'm nearly cracked with it, an' the head is like to fly off me. Nannie that brought home a curran' cake from the market yesterday, an' sweet, white stuff on the top of it, an' we ate[Pg 15] it with the tay, an' about an hour after the old tooth gave one jump, an' it's at me ever since. I never slept a wink all night with it. Nannie herself got the toothache about a couple of hours ago, an' she's mortial bad with it, too. She had to go to bed a while ago." [Pg 15] "The poor thing," said Ned M'Grane, sympathetically. "I'm sorry in troth, for both of you, an' glad that I came down. I might as well not be at home at all, because Seumas Shanley wanted me to go with him over to Knockbride after Mass. He was goin' over to see some of his mother's people that came home from America. I think they're goin' to have a spree or a flare-up of some kind over there to-night. I was near goin' only I knew I'd have to be up early in the mornin' to shoe the Major's horses." "The same bucko is no loss by goin' to Knockbride or anywhere else," said Larry, with a frown; and then in a whisper, and forgetting the toothache for a moment, he said: "I'm thinkin' he's after some lassie in that direction. When he seen I wouldn't let Nannie throw over a well-to-do, comfortable man like Jack Flanagan for a scamp like him, I suppose he took after some other decent man's daughter. He was stravagin' about the market yesterday with some strange girl, an' wouldn't even look at us. I think my lassie," jerking his thumb towards the door of the little bedroom to which Nannie had retired, "had a wish for him up to that, but she saw then it wasn't her, but the place, he was after. And I'm glad she got sense, because it isn't every day she could get married into a place like Jack Flanagan's—an' it's[Pg 16] little fortune he wants either. We made the match for after Lent yesterday." [Pg 16] "Is that a fact?" said Ned. "Well, your mind ought to be easy now." "So it is, Ned; so it is. When it came to the finish, Nannie didn't go against my wishes, an' all she asked was that I'd leave her free until after Lent; an' sure there's no use in rushin' it—is there, Ned?" "Divil a use," said Ned.
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