"Now, Kathleen," said he, when preparing for his immediate departure,
"I'm, thinkin' of what they'll say, when they see, me so smooth an'
warm-lookin'. I'll engage they'll be axin' one another, 'Musha, how, did
Owen M'Carthy get an, at all, to be so well to do in the world, as he
appears to be, afther failin' on his ould farm?'"
"Well, but Owen, you know how to manage them."
"Throth, I do that. But there is one thing they'll never get out o' me,
any way."
"You won't tell that to any o' them, Owen?"
"Kathleen, if I thought they only suspected it, I'd never show my face
in Tubber Derg agin. I think I could bear to be--an' yet it 'ud be a
hard struggle with me too--but I think I could bear to be buried among
black strangers, rather than it should be said, over my grave, among
my own, 'there's where Owen M'Carthy lies--who was the only man, of his
name, that ever begged his morsel on the king's highway. There he lies,
the descendant of the great M'Carthy Mores, an' yet he was a beggar.'
I know, Kathleen achora, it's neither a sin nor a shame to ax one's bit
from our fellow-creatures, whin, fairly brought to it, widout any fault
of our own; but still I feel something in me, that can't bear to think
of it widout shame an' heaviness of heart."
"Well, it's one comfort, that nobody knows it but ourselves. The poor
childhre, for their own sakes, won't ever breathe it; so that it's
likely the sacret 'll be berrid wid us.
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