The Kellys and the OKellys | Page 6

I think Meg
let slip something. The girls and Anty are thick as thiefs since old Sim
died; though they couldn't be at the house much since Barry came home,
and Anty daren't for her life come down to the shop.'
'Did mother say anything about the schame?'
'Faix, not much; but what she did say, didn't show she'd much mind for
it. Since Sim Lynch tried to get Toneroe from her, when father died,
she'd never a good word for any of them. Not but what she's always a
civil look for Anty, when she sees her.'
'There's not much fear she'll look black on the wife, when you bring the
money home with her. But where'll you live, Martin? The little shop at
Dunmore'll be no place for Mrs Kelly, when there's a lady of the name
with œ400 a-year of her own.'
''Deed then, John, and that's what I don't know. Maybe I'll build up the
ould house at Toneroe; some of the O'Kellys themselves lived there,
years ago.'
'I believe they did; but it was years ago, and very many years ago, too,
since they lived there. Why you'd have to pull it all down, before you
began to build it up!'
'Maybe I'd build a new house, out and out. Av' I got three new lifes in
the laise, I'd do that; and the lord wouldn't be refusing me, av' I asked
him.'
'Bother the lord, Martin; why you'd be asking anything of any lord, and
you with œ400 a-year of your own? Give up Toneroe, and go and live
at Dunmore House at once.'
'What! along with Barry when I and Anty's married? The biggest house
in county Galway wouldn't hould the three of us.'
'You don't think Barry Lynch'll stay at Dunmore afther you've married
his sisther?'
'And why not?'

'Why not! Don't you know Barry thinks himself one of the raal gentry
now? Any ways, he wishes others to think so. Why, he'd even himself
to Lord Ballindine av' he could! Didn't old Sim send him to the same
English school with the lord on purpose? tho' little he got by it, by all
accounts! And d'you think he'll remain in Dunmore, to be
brother-in-law to the son of the woman that keeps the little grocer's
shop in the village? Not he! He'll soon be out of Dunmore when he
hears what his sister's afther doing, and you'll have Dunmore House to
yourselves then, av' you like it.'
'I'd sooner live at Toneroe, and that's the truth; and I'd not give up the
farm av' she'd double the money! But, John, faith, here's the judges at
last. Hark, to the boys screeching!'
'They'd not screech that way for the judges, my boy. It's the traversers
that's Dan and the rest of 'em. They're coming into court. Thank God,
they'll soon be at work now!'
'And will they come through this way? Faith, av' they do, they'll have
as hard work to get in, as they'll have to get out by and by.'
'They'll not come this way there's another way in for them: tho' they are
traversers now, they didn't dare but let them go in at the same door as
the judges themselves.'
'Hurrah, Dan! More power to you! Three cheers for the traversers, and
Repale for ever! Success to every mother's son of you, my darlings!
You'll be free yet, in spite of John Jason Rigby and the rest of 'em! The
prison isn't yet built that'd hould ye, nor won't be! Long life to you,
Sheil sure you're a Right Honourable Repaler now, in spite of
Greenwich Hospital and the Board of Trade! More power, Gavan Duffy;
you're the boy that'll settle 'em at last! Three cheers more for the Lord
Mayor, God bless him! Well, yer reverence, Mr Tierney never mind,
they could come to no good when they'd be parsecuting the likes of you!
Bravo, Tom Hurrah for Tom Steele!'
Such, and such like, were the exclamations which greeted the traversers,
and their cortŠge, as they drew up to the front or the Four Courts. Dan
O'Connell was in the Lord Mayor's state carriage, accompanied by that
high official; and came up to stand his trial for conspiracy and sedition,
in just such a manner as he might be presumed to proceed to take the
chair at some popular municipal assembly; and this was just the thing
qualified to please those who were on his own side, and mortify the

feelings of the party so bitterly opposed to him. There was a bravado in
it, and an apparent contempt, not of the law so much as of the existing
authorities of the law, which was well qualified to have this double
effect.
And now the outer doors of the