Tarry Flynn Read Online Free PDF Page B

days than years. Listen, listen.’ They all listened to the rattle of the road gate. ‘I hope to the sweet and honourable father,’ gasped Mrs Flynn, ‘that it’s not someone coming in on top of us at this hour of the evening. Whip that kettle off the fire and not have us making tay for him.’
    Aggie took off the kettle, shoved it under the stairs and disarranged the clean tea-mugs on the table. The mother dashed to the door. It was Mrs Callan prowling for her ducks, which were laying out those nights.
    â€˜Won’t ye come in and rest your stockings, Mrs Callan?’ Mrs Flynn said, with enthusiastic hospitality.
    â€˜I can’t till I get me ducks,’ she said in her sneaky crying voice.
    â€˜Would ye let me look into your stable to see if they might be there? I thought I saw them coming this way.’
    Mrs Flynn did not like the suggestion that she was exploiting Callan’s ducks. Indeed this was not the first time that Mrs Callan had come round on a similar errand.
    â€˜Troth, the only time, Mrs Callan,’ said Mrs Flynn, ‘that you’d be sure of finding your ducks about our street is when we’re feeding the hens. They are the boys for aiting me hens’ feeding, Mrs Callan, but as for dropping an egg here that’s the last thing they’d think of. Oh, catch them to lay about a stranger’s place.’
    â€˜It’s a wonder they’d be coming, then, to ait your hens’ feeding seeing that they have the run of the fields and the bog – the two bogs at that.’
    â€˜Troth, there’s damn all nourishment in the fields or in the bogs, Mrs Callan. If that’s all ducks get the devil the many eggs they’ll lay.’ Tarry went to the road gate to see if his neighbour Eusebius was coming.
    The mother called him: ‘Tarry, did ye chance to see Mrs Callan’s ducks knocking about this evening?’
    â€˜They were over in our field trying to look for worms in the drills after me about three hours ago. After that I saw them making for Cassidy’s field of oats.’
    â€˜Aren’t they the terrible travellers,’ Mrs Callan drawled innocently. ‘It must be the breed.’
    â€˜Troth,’ said Mrs Flynn, ‘it’s the breed of everything to look for the full of their bellies, Mrs Callan. The ducks will always come home if they’re sure of getting a feed when they come.’
    When Mrs Callan was gone Mrs Flynn turned to her son: ‘That party never fed man or baste in their life. Even the cats come here and I often take pity on them mewing for a sup of milk. Mane lot of beggars and the consait of them. Why, that young whipster of theirs, May, you’d think she was the lady of the land. With her little black head and her sparrow-legs, ach, she’s not a girl nor a patch on a girl’s backside… Gwan, now, hen, into the house with ye.’ The woman shooed the wandering hen in the direction of the hen-house door. ‘I don’t like ahen that doesn’t go to roost early in the evening; she won’t lay the next day. My, isn’t it a lovely warm evening.’ She gazed up the valley.
    â€˜Is that Petey Meegan I see? Another slack gelding. The devil the woman he’ll ever take now.’

2
    The silly attack on the girl at the cross-roads, though it was a fairly ordinary occurrence, appeared to have set Father Daly thinking – thinking that life in Dargan was in danger of boiling over in wild orgies of lust. And what did he decide to do but make arrangements for a big Mission to the parishioners by the Order of Redemptorists who were such specialists in sex sins.
    Nothing could have appeared more pathetic to Tarry or Eusebius when the news got around. The parish was comprised of old unmarried men and women. For a mile radius from where Flynn’s lived Tarry could only count four houses in which there were married couples with children.
    From a devotion known