"Ha, very good, faith!" said John Brien; "them women wants to know too much!"
"And if they do itself," retorted Mrs. Twomey, instant in defence of her sex, "isn't it to plase the min that's follyin' them for the news! Yis! An' they too big fools to hear it for theirselves!"
John Brien, somewhat stupefied by this home thrust, made no reply, but smote the donkey heavily, provoking it to a jog that temporarily jolted conversation to death.
At the next incline, however, Mrs. Twomey took up her parable again.
"Tell me now awhile, John, what day is this th' election is?"
"I d'no if it isn't Choosday week it is," replied John Brien, without interest. "There's two o' them up for it now. Young Coppinger, that was the first in it, and a chap from T'prairy. What's this his name is?--Burke, I think it is. Sure they had two meetin's after chapel at Riverstown last Sunday. Roaring there they were out o' mothor-cars. But it's little I regard them and their higs and thrigs!"
"Why wouldn't ye wote for Larry Coppinger, John?" said Mrs. Twomey, persuasively "and him 'All-for-Ireland'! A strong, cocky young boy he is too; greatly for composhing he is, an' painting, an' the like o' that. Sure didn't I tell him it was what it was he had a rag on every bush! 'Well,' says he, 'Mrs. Twomey,' says he, 'I'll have another rag on another bush soon,' says he. 'Sir,' says I to him, 'that much would not surpass your honour!' But faith, they're tellin' me now Burke'll have him bet out, and I'm sorry to me heart for it."
John Brien looked from one side of the road to the other, and ahead, between his donkey's ears. The mist was close round the cart as the walls of a room; the only sound was the thin wind singing in the telegraph wires.
"Mrs. Twomey," murmured John Brien, "the Clergy is agin him!"
"Oh, great and merciful Lord God!" said Mrs. Twomey. She said it without either irreverence or reverence. She merely wished to express to John Brien her comprehension of the importance of his statement.
Larry had flung himself into electioneering as an alternative to drink. That was how he put it to himself. He took rooms at Hallinan's Hotel, in Cluhir, in order to be on top of the railway station, and the situation generally, and he had, moreover, a standing invitation to No. 6, The Mall, for any meal, at any hour of the day or night, that he found suitable. The district to be canvassed was a wide one, and day after day Larry and the faithful Barty went forth to interview "People of importance"; darkly-cautious publicans, with wives lurking at hand to make sure that "Himself" should do nothing rash; uninterested farmers, who "had their land bought," and were left cold by the differences 'twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee; and visits to "The Clergy" of all denominations, productive of much artificially friendly converse and no very definite promises.