“Bob!” said Doris. “What!” asked Bob. “Do you know what I believe?” “No.” “I believe Miss Lestrange is going to marry Mr Fanshawe without any one knowing.” “What’s the matter if she does?” “I heard him say something last night, when he had Selina on his lap and we were playing with the motor-car, about an Archbishop and a marriage licence, and that nobody need know; and, just now, when he said he’d written to the Archbishop, did you hear what she said?” “No.” “She said _prenez garde_, just as granny does if she’s speaking about anything she doesn’t want us to know. Then he said he’d written to the Archbishop’s aunt, or some nonsense.” “Yes, I heard him say that,” said Bob. “I believe they’re going to get married,” went on Doris, “but don’t tell any one.” “Who’s going to—it’s only girls tell things—I’m not going to tell. Come on, and let’s look at ’em going into dinner.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXV A POTENTIAL POET The stable of an Irish country house has always, or nearly always, a certain number of volunteer and unpaid on-hangers. At any hour of the day you might have seen in the stable-yard of Glen Druid Billy the Buck chewing a straw, Shan Finucane with his hands in his pockets, and his back against the harness room door, Moriarty, the rat-catcher from Castle Connell, colloguing, rat cage in hand, with the scullery-maid, or Micky Mooney sitting on a corn-bin, whistling and kicking his heels. Micky was “soft.” He lived with his mother in the village of Castle Knock; and every morning early she would turn him out of her cabin, just as a person turns a donkey out to graze. He was almost entirely self-supporting. In summer he would disappear for days amidst the hills, communing with nature and existing on roots and whortle berries and wild strawberries. If Micky sat down in a field full of rabbits, the rabbits would play about him within arm’s reach; birds knew him for their friend, cows let him milk them into his hat without protest or lamentation, and hens gave up their eggs without complaint, when raised from their nests by his deft fingers. He was of all mad creatures the most harmless and the most natural—a really beautiful character; one of that rare type wherein lunacy is the outcome of innocence carried to an extreme. Farmers threatened to shoot him, it is true, and he had actually been fired at, and peppered with small shot when engaged in stealing eggs, but this was not done from any particular ill-will. The farmer had acted just as he acted towards the thrushes and blackbirds that pilfered his crops. Micky was, in fact, regarded by the general public as being on a level with the birds and the rabbits, and, though no one would have hurt him for any consideration, still, had some outraged farmer shot him with a bullet in earnest, I doubt if there would have been much of an inquest.