Lucinda Sly Read Online Free PDF Page B

that evening, Sly told her that he would be travelling closeby Tullow the following Sunday. He told her that a farmer who lived near there was looking for a working horse and that he, Sly, had one. Without a doubt, there wasn’t a word of the truth in his statement. He wanted to cast his eye over her holding to assess it as a dowry, that is if things developed that far. He wasgreedy for land since he was a young man.
    ‘Why don’t you come to my house on Sunday?’ Lucinda suggested. ‘I’ll have some food ready for you.’
    ‘I’ll be there about two o’clock,’ Sly replied, barely concealing his excitement.
    Sly walked Lucinda to her horse, which she had tied to a ring at the side of the street; he put the horse under the cart and made sure that the horse’s harness was properly fitted for the road. No sooner had Lucinda and her horse passed the top of the street than Sly headed for Langstrom’s tavern and his old ways. He would have until Sunday to recover.
    When Lucinda reached home that Thursday evening, her two cows hadn’t yet been milked. Having unharnessed the horse and put him grazing in the haggard, she milked her cows, strained the milk and poured it into the dishes in the dairy. It was many a long day since she had been so satisfied in her mind.
    ‘Now,’ she sighed, ‘maybe after all my years of slavery God will grant me ease for the rest of my life. Oh, when I think of the hungry years I spent digging and harrowing, sowing and harvesting to pay my rent, not to mention having to put a bite in my son’s mouth and in my own … Yes, and to put clothes on our bones, he had little thanks but to half kill me before he headed out into the world. But, that said, if he came in the door this minute, I’d forgive him everything … Ah yes, Walter Sly … Is he as well-to-do as I sensed from his talk? A woman of my age should be careful. The next day I go to Carlow, I’ll enquire as to his pedigree. Who would know him better than the shopkeeper he sells his butter to? I am at anage now where there is no room for making a mistake. It’s a fine thing to marry into a farm as long as I wouldn’t be a slave. I have done my slaving.’
    It was late in the night when Sly arrived home. He was barely able to take the saddle off his horse in his drunken stupor. When he had ripped the buckle under the horse’s belly, the saddle fell to the ground. He took off the headstall and let the horse off through the barn down to the field.
    ‘Bad cess to you! Isn’t there a great hunger on you? By God, there will be no cow milked till morning. I’m tired from the work of the day,’ he yawned.
    Sly sat in his chair in the corner, took his pipe from the hole in the hob and pushed the chair up on its two back legs, a habit he had when he was thinking deeply. A good day’s work, he felt. His chances of securing a wife were good, a wife who was accustomed to farm work, churning, who could sew a patch in the backside of trousers, bake a cake of bread, and split seed potatoes for the spring planting. Wouldn’t it be good to come in from the field after a long day’s work to a hot meal on the table before him? But he thought it would be some time before that happened. He would have to be careful as this was his last chance to find a wife. No intermediary came to his house with an account of a match these twenty Shrovetides past. When he had thought enough about what was before him, Sly got up from the chair, broke wind and staggered to the bedroom.
    Lucinda rose early the following Sunday morning and put a hunk of pork into the pot on the hook over the open fire. Shewould boil it for an hour and then put it on the hot coals on the side of the fire. That way, the meat and green cabbage would be softly boiling while she attended the service at the Protestant church a mile down the road.
    In his own house in Oldleighlin, Walter Sly was up at the break of day in order to have the housework done and himself well shaved for the