“Father,” said she, “where did you get all the good food?”
The angels had eaten of his bounty, so Mac Cann considered that he had nothing to fear from their side. He regarded them while he pulled thoughtfully at his pipe.
“Do you know,” said he, “that the hardest thing in the world is to get the food, and a body is never done looking for it. We are after eating all that we got this morning, so now we’ll have to search for what we’ll eat tonight, and in the morning we’ll have to look again for more of it, and the day after that, and every day until we are dead we’ll have to go on searching for the food.”
“I would have thought,” said the eldest angel, “that of all problems food would be the simplest in an organised society.”
This halted Mac Cann for a moment.
“Maybe you’re right, sir,” said he kindly, and he dismissed the interruption.
“I heard a man once—he was a stranger to these parts, and he had a great deal of the talk—he said that the folk at the top do grab all the food in the world, and that then they make every person work for them, and that when you’ve done a certain amount of work they give you just enough money to buy just enough food to let you keep on working for them. That’s what the man said: a big, angry man he was, with whiskers on him like the whirlwind, and he swore he wouldn’t work for anyone. I’m thinking myself that he didn’t work either. We were great friends, that man and me, for I don’t do any work if I can help it; it’s that I haven’t got the knack for work, and, God help me! I’ve a big appetite. Besides that, the work I’d be able to do in a day mightn’t give me enough to eat, and wouldn’t I be cheated then?”
“Father,” said Mary, “where did you get all the good food this morning?”
“I’ll tell you that. I went down to the bend of the road where the house is, and I had the three shillings in my hand. When I came to the house the door was standing wide open. I hit it a thump of my fist, but nobody answered me. ‘God be with all here,’ said I, and in I marched. There was a woman lying on the floor in one room, and her head had been cracked with a stick; and in the next room there was a man lying on the floor, and his head had been cracked with a stick. It was in that room I saw the food packed nice and tight in the basket that you see before you. I looked around another little bit, and then I came away, for, as they say, a wise man never found a dead man, and I’m wise enough no matter what I look like.”
“Were the people all dead?” said Mary, horrified.
“They were not—they only got a couple of clouts. I’m thinking they are all right by this, and they looking for the basket, but, please God, they won’t find it. But what I’d like to know is this, who was it hit the people with a stick, and then walked away without the food and the drink and the tobacco, for that’s a queer thing.”
He turned to his daughter.
“Mary, a cree, let you burn up that basket in the brazier, for I don’t like the look of it at all, and it empty.”
So Mary burned the basket with great care while her father piled their goods on the cart and yoked up the ass.
Meanwhile the angels were talking together, and after a short time they approached Mac Cann.
“If it is not inconvenient,” said their spokesman, “we would like to remain with you for a time. We think that in your company we may learn more than we might otherwise do, for you seem to be a man of ability, and at present we are rather lost in this strange world.”
“Sure,” said Patsy heartily, “I haven’t the least objection in the world, only, if you don’t want to be getting into trouble, and if you’ll take my advice, I’d say that ye ought to take off them kinds of clothes you’re wearing and get into duds something like my own, and let you put your wings aside and your fine high crowns, the way folk won’t be staring at you every foot of the road, for I’m telling you that it’s a bad thing to have people looking after you when you go through a little village or a town, because you can never know who’ll remember you afterwards, and you maybe not wanting to be remembered at all.”
“If our attire,” said the angel, “is such as would make us remarkable—”
“It is,” said Patsy. “People would think you belonged to a circus, and the crowds of the world would be after you in every place.”
“Then,” replied the angel, “we will do as you say.”
“I have clothes enough in this bundle,” said Patsy, with a vague air. “I found them up there in the house, and I was thinking of yourselves when I took them. Let you put them on, and we will tie up your own things in a sack and bury them here so that when you want them again you’ll be able to get them, and then we can travel wherever we please and no person will say a word to us.”
So the strangers retired a little way with the bundle, and there they shed their finery.
When they appeared again they were clad in stout, ordinary clothing. They did not look a bit different from Patsy Mac Cann except that they were all taller men than he, but between his dilapidation and theirs there was very little to choose.
Mac Cann
