onnel.

CHAPTER VI

A FAIRING

Up at Lisconnel, meanwhile, as the idle hours loitered by, Ody
Rafferty's aunt grew tired of her solitary housekeeping, and late in the
afternoon she made her way down as far as the Joyces'. Here a number of
the neighbours were sitting about in almost the same place where Theresa
had sustained the loss of her cherry-coloured knot. But to-day there
were no rough breezes stirring to bring about such disasters by their
unmannerly pranks. The sun-steeped air was so still that the thick
bushes stood as steady as the boulders, and even the rushes nodded
slightly and stiffly. As the old woman hobbled down the slope she saw
Denis O'Meara's scarlet uniform gleaming martially against a background
of dark broom and hoary rock. Its wearer was, however, very peacefully
employed in pulling the silky floss off the heads of the bog-cotton,
which lay in a great heap before him on a flat-topped boulder, with a
big bunch of many-hued wild flowers beside it. Theresa Joyce, who sat
opposite to him, was pulling bog-cotton too, though less diligently, for
it might have been noticed that she often looked off her work, and
towards the scrap of road that lay within her ken. Joe Egan was at his
cousin's elbow, and a few other lads and lasses made a rough circle. But
old Mrs. Joyce, and old Mrs. Ryan, and old Paddy Ryan, and old Felix
O'Beirne had established themselves on a low grassy bank at a little
distance. It was kept so closely cropped by the Ryans' goat that its
dandelions grew dwarfed and stalkless, and were set flat in the fine
sward like mock suns. All this day the real sun had shone on it so
strongly that the air was aromatic with the odour of its dim-blossomed
herbs, and to touch it was like laying your hand on the warm side of
some sleek-coated beast. Old Paddy said you might think you were sitting
on the back of an ould cow, but his wife rejoined that "you'd have to go
far enough from Lisconnel, worse luck, before you'd get the chance of
doin' such a thing." And she shook her head over the reflection so
regretfully that a matter-of-fact person might have inferred her to have
been formerly much in the habit of enjoying seats on the backs of cows.

These elders, from where they sat, commanded a comprehensive view of the
crops of Lisconnel, its potatoes and oats, green and gold, meshed in
their grey stone fences, and flecked with obstructive boulders and
laboured cairns. In the middle of the R