All on the Irish Shore | Page 3

pink coat.
At this point she heard a step on the gravel outside; Bismarck uttered a
bloodhound bay and got under the sofa. It was a sunny morning in late
October, and the French window was open; outside it, ragged as a
Russian poodle and nearly as black, stood the tinker who had the day
before wielded the frying-pan with such effect.
"Me lady," began the tinker, "I ax yer ladyship's pardon, but me little
dog is dead."
"Well?" said Mrs. Alexander, fixing a gaze of clear grey rectitude upon
him.
"Me lady," continued the tinker, reverentially but firmly, "'twas afther
he was run by thim dogs yestherday, and 'twas your ladyship's dog that
finished him. He tore the throat out of him under the bed!" He pointed
an accusing forefinger at Bismarck, whose lambent eyes of terror
glowed from beneath the valance of the sofa.
"Nonsense! I saw your dog; he was twice my dog's size," said

Bismarck's mistress decidedly, not, however, without a remembrance
of the blood on Bismarck's nose. She adored courage, and had always
cherished a belief that Bismarck's sharklike jaws implied the possession
of latent ferocity.
"Ah, but he was very wake, ma'am, afther he bein' hunted," urged the
tinker. "I never slep' a wink the whole night, but keepin' sups o' milk to
him and all sorts. Ah, ma'am, ye wouldn't like to be lookin' at him!"
The tinker was a very good-looking young man, almost apostolic in
type, with a golden red aureole of hair and beard and candid blue eyes.
These latter filled with tears as their owner continued:--
"He was like a brother for me; sure he follied me from home. 'Twas he
was dam wise! Sure at home all me mother'd say to him was, "Where's
the ducks, Captain?" an' he wouldn't lave wather nor bog-hole round
the counthry but he'd have them walked and the ducks gethered. The
pigs could be in their choice place, wherever they'd be he'd go around
them. If ye'd tell him to put back the childhren from the fire, he'd ketch
them by the sleeve and dhrag them."
The requiem ceased, and the tinker looked grievingly into his hat.
"What is your name?" asked Mrs. Alexander sternly. "How long is it
since you left home?"
Had the tinker been as well acquainted with her as he was afterwards
destined to become, he would have been aware that when she was most
judicial she was frequently least certain of what her verdict was going
to be.
"Me name's Willy Fennessy, me lady," replied the tinker, "an' I'm goin'
the roads no more than three months. Indeed, me lady, I think the time
too long that I'm with these blagyard thravellers. All the friends I have
was poor Captain, and he's gone from me."
"Go round to the kitchen," said Mrs. Alexander.

The results of Willy Fennessy's going round to the kitchen were
far-reaching. Its most immediate consequences were that (1) he mended
the ventilator of the kitchen range; (2) he skinned a brace of rabbits for
Miss Barnet, the cook; (3) he arranged to come next day and repair the
clandestine devastations of the maids among the china.
He was pronounced to be a very agreeable young man.
Before luncheon (of which meal he partook in the kitchen) he had been
consulted by Patsey Crimmeen about the chimney of the kennel boiler,
had single-handed reduced it to submission, and had, in addition, boiled
the meal for the hounds with a knowledge of proportion and an untiring
devotion to the use of the potstick which produced "stirabout" of a
smoothness and excellence that Miss Barnet herself might have been
proud of.
"You know, mother," said Freddy that evening, "you do want another
chap in the garden badly."
"Well it's not so much the garden," said Mrs. Alexander with alacrity,
"but I think he might be very useful to you, dear, and it's such a great
matter his being a teetotaler, and he seems so fond of animals. I really
feel we ought to try and make up to him somehow for the loss of his
dog; though, indeed, a more deplorable object than that poor mangy
dog I never saw!"
"All right: we'll put him in the back lodge, and we'll give him Bizzy as
a watch dog. Won't we, Bizzy?" replied Freddy, dragging the
somnolent Bismarck from out of the heart of the hearthrug, and
accepting without repugnance the comprehensive lick that enveloped
his chin.
From which it may be gathered that Mrs. Alexander and her son had
fallen, like their household, under the fatal spell of the fascinating
tinker.
At about the time that this conversation was taking place, Mr. Fennessy,
having spent an evening of valedictory carouse with his tribe in the

ruined cottage, was walking,