“Is it to scratch the beautiful paint ye would, with the cart!” cried a wrathful man hauling the ass aside bodily, while the unhappy Mrs. Cooney stammered out excuses that no one heard, and blinked feebly at the Rolls-Royce—which was pardonable, since she had never seen one before. “God help us, ’tis the heighth of a house!” “I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” said O’Neill, smiling at her distressed face. The crowd broke into smiles in answer. “’Tis not like the Englishman he is—the one that galloped his machine over Ellen Clancy’s gander, an’ he goin’ to Rosapenna!” shrilled a voice. “Watch him now—and the bonnivs under the wheels of him!”—as a drove of fat pink pigs broke through the crowd, scattered, in the infuriating manner peculiar to pigs, and resisted all efforts to collect them out of harm’s way. Their owner, a lean, black-whiskered man, lifted up his voice and bewailed them. “Yerra, he have them thrampled! No—aisy, sir, just a moment, till I get at him with a stick. That one do be always in the wrong place.” He hauled a pig bodily from beneath the car, retaining it by one leg, while it drowned any other remarks with its shrieks, and its companions scattered through the crowd, pursued hotly by the dogs. “Sorry—I ought not to bring a motor through a fair,” said O’Neill, willing to concede the right to the road to the “bonnivs.” “An’ why wouldn’t you?” said their owner, cheerfully. “Many’s the time I’d not so much as the one left to me when I’d brang ’em through, an’ I scourin’ every boreen after them. Let you go on, sir—it’s all right.” The motor wormed its way along. When the crowd grew less congested, O’Neill ventured to increase the speed. Just as he did so, a small child, escaping from its mother, who was driving a wordy bargain over a matter of geese, toddled into the road in pursuit of a fat puppy; and having caught it, sat down suddenly, right in the path of the motor. A girl shrieked, and O’Neill wrenched the car to a standstill, the bonnet not two yards from the baby. Jim was out in the road in a flash, and picked up the urchin, who showed considerable annoyance at the escape of the puppy, but was otherwise quite unmoved, and accepted a penny with a composure worthy of a duke. The crowd collected anew with unbelievable swiftness, and O’Neill groaned. “’Tis Maggie O’Hare’s baby. Woman, dear, where are ye? an’ he after being nearly kilt on ye?” “Did ye see his honour pull up? An ass wouldn’t have done it, an’ he dhrawin’ a cart!” “I seen him sit down in the road, in-under the mothor, an’ I knew he was dead, only I’d not time to let a bawl out of me!” “Is it dead? Sure, look at him, an’ the big gentleman carryin’ him, no less!” “Grinning he is, the way you’d say he was the best boy in Ireland. Ah, that’s the dotey wee thing!” “Sure, that one has no fear at all. _He_’ll be the boy for the trenches!”