About a month or so before the departure of Frank and Art from the
Corner House, Jemmy Murray and another man were one day in the beginning
of May strolling through one of his pasture-fields. His companion was
a thin, hard-visaged little fellow, with a triangular face, and dry
bristly hair, very much the color of, and nearly as prickly as, a
withered furze bush; both, indeed, were congenial spirits, for it is
only necessary to say, that he of the furze bush was another of those
charital and generous individuals whose great delight consisted, like
his friend Murray, in watching the seasons, and speculating upon the
failure of the crops. He had the reputation of being wealthy, and
in fact was so; indeed, of the two, those who had reason to know,
considered that he held the weightier purse; his name was Cooney
Finigan, and the object of his visit to Murray--their conversation,
however, will sufficiently develop that. Both, we should observe,
appeared to be exceedingly blank and solemn; Cooney's hard face, as he
cast his eye about him, would have made one imagine that he had just
buried the last of his family, and Murray looked as if he had a son
about to be hanged. The whole cause of this was simply that a finer
season, nor one giving ampler promise of abundance, had not come within
the memory of man.
"Ah!" said Murray, with a sigh, "look, Cooney, at the distressin' growth
of grass that's there--a foot high if it's an inch! If God hasn't sed
it, there will be the largest and heaviest crops that ever was seen in
the country; heigho!"
"Well, but one can't have good luck always," replied Cooney; "only it's
the wondherful forwardness of the whate that's distressin' me.
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