“Oh, asthore machree, why can’t ye banish thim black thoughts!” says the stone-cutter. “Maybe,” he says, “the banshee will not come again. Ain’t all the counthry-side prayin’ for ye this night, an’ didn’t Father Cassidy himself bid you to hope? The saints in Heaven couldn’t be so crool!” says he.
But the colleen wint on as though she hadn’t heard him, or as if he hadn’t intherrupted her:
“An’ listen,” says she; “they’ll come urging ye, the neighbours, an’ raysonin’ with you. You’re own flesh an’ blood’ll come, an’, no doubt, me own with them, an’ they all sthriving to push me out of your heart, an’ to put another woman there in my place. I’ll know it all, but I won’t be able to call to you, Cormac machree, for I’ll be lying silent undher the grass, or undher the snow up behind the church.”
While she was sayin’ thim last worruds, although Darby’s heart was meltin’ for Eileen, his mind began running over the colleens of that townland to pick out the one who’d be most likely to marry Cormac in the ind. You know how far-seeing an’ quick-minded was the knowledgeable man. He settled sudden on the Hanlon girl, an’ daycided at once that
