As she went back to the house with the bundle of food the ass regarded her.
“You are a good girl,” said the ass.
He shook himself and dissipated his thoughts; then he trotted briskly here and there on the path to see if there was anything worth looking for.
XIX
They shared the food: there was little of it, and some of it was wet; but they each had a piece of bread, a knuckle of cheese, and three cold potatoes.
Mary said there was something wrong with her, and she passed two of her cold potatoes to the cherub Art, who ate them easily.
“I wish you had given them to me,” said her father.
“I’ll give you one of mine,” said Eileen Ni Cooley, and she thrust one across to him.
Mac Cann pushed it entire into his mouth, and ate it as one who eats in a trance: he stared at Eileen.
“Why did you give me your potato?” said he.
Eileen blushed until not a single freckle in her face was visible.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“You don’t seem to know anything at all this day,” he complained. “You’re full of fun,” said he.
He lit his pipe, and, after pulling for a while at it, he handed it to the woman.
“Take a draw at that pipe,” he commanded, “and let us be decent with each other.”
Eileen Ni Cooley did take a draw at the pipe, but she handed it back soon.
“I never was much at the smoking,” said she.
Caeltia had his pipe going at full blast. He was leaning against the wall with his eyes half closed, and was thinking deeply between puffs.
Finaun had a good grip on Mary’s hair, which he was methodically plaiting and unloosening again. He was sunken in reverie.
Mary was peeping from beneath her lids at Art, and was at the same time watching everybody else to see that she was not observed.
Art was whistling to himself in a low tone, and he was looking fixedly at a spider.
The spider was hauling on a loose rope of his tent, and he was very leisurely. One would have thought that he was smoking also.
“What did you have for dinner?” said Art to the spider.
“Nothing, sir, but a little, thin, wisp of a young fly,” said the spider.
He was a thickset, heavy kind of spider, and he seemed to be middle-aged, and resigned to it.
“That is all I had myself,” said Art. “Are the times bad with you now, or are they middling?”
“Not so bad, glory be to God! The flies do wander in through the holes, and when they come from the light outside to the darkness in here, sir, we catch them on the wall, and we crunch their bones.”
“Do they like that?”
“They do not, sir, but we do. The lad with the stout, hairy legs, down there beside your elbow, caught a bluebottle yesterday; there was eating on that fellow, I tell you, and he’s not all eaten yet, but that spider is always lucky, barring the day he caught the wasp.”
“That was a thing he didn’t like?” queried Art.
“Don’t mention it to him, sir, he doesn’t care to talk about it.”
“What way are you going to fasten up your rope?” said Art.
“I’ll put a spit on the end of it, and then I’ll thump it with my head to make it stick.”
“Well, good luck to yourself.”
“Good luck to your honour.”
Said Patsy to Caeltia, pointing to Finaun:
“What does he be thinking about when he gets into them fits?”
“He does be talking to the hierarchy,” replied Caeltia.
“And who are themselves?”
“They are the people in charge of this world.”
“Is it the kings and the queens and the Holy Pope?”
“No, they are different kinds of people.”
Patsy yawned.
“What does he be talking to them about?”
“Every kind of thing,” replied Caeltia, and yawned also. “They are asking him for advice now.”
“What is he saying?”
“He is talking about love,” said Caeltia.
“He is always talking about that,” said Patsy.
“And,” said Caeltia, “he is talking about knowledge.”
“It’s another word of his.”
“And he is saying that love and knowledge are the same thing.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Patsy.
For he was in a bad temper. Either the close confinement, or the dull weather, or the presence of Eileen Ni Cooley, or all of these, had made him savage.
He arose and began striding through the narrow room, kicking stones from one side of the place to the other and glooming fiercely at everybody. Twice he halted before Eileen Ni Cooley, staring at her, and twice, without a word said, he resumed his marching.
Suddenly he leaned his back against the wall facing her, and shouted:
“Well, Eileen a grah, the man went away from you, the man with the big stick and the lengthy feet. Ah! that’s a man you’d be crying out for and you all by yourself in the night.”
“He was a good man,” said Eileen; “there was no harm in that man, Padraig.”
“Maybe he used to be putting his two arms around you now and then beside a hedge and giving you long kisses on the mouth?”
“He used to be doing that.”
“Aye did he, indeed, and he wasn’t the first man to do that, Eileen.”
“Maybe you’re right, Padraig.”
“Nor the twenty-first.”
“You’ve got me here in the house, Padraig, and the people around us are your own friends.”
Caeltia also had arisen to his feet and was staring morosely at Eileen. Suddenly he leaped to her, wrenched the shawl from her head with a wide gesture, and gripped her throat between his hands; as her head touched the ground she gasped, and then, and just as suddenly, he released her. He stood up, looking wildly at Patsy, who stared back at
