The Made Marriage Read Online Free PDF

was the small figure with the shabby suitcase and lost air, not at all the kind of person who would consider it a privilege to pay handsomely for the novelty of riding on a genuine Irish side-car.
    As Kate advanced towards him he had been on the point of turning his ancient horse’s head and setting out for home, as another train was not due for several hours. He scratched his chin thoughtfully as Kate gazed up at him and asked doubtfully, ‘I suppose Mr. Lawlor didn’t send you for me?’
    ‘Owen Lawlor?’ he replied in bewilderment. ‘ Now why should Mr. Owen do such a thing?’
    ‘I mean Owen Lawlor of Laragh,’ Kate told him hopefully.
    ‘There’s no need to tell me Owen Lawlor lives at Laragh,’ he snorted. ‘Hasn’t there been a Lawlor at Laragh for the last two hundred years? Why, I worked for old Terence Lawlor when I was no more than a gossoon, and a nicer-spoken gentleman you wouldn’t find in the whole length and breadth of County Tipperary.’ The old man paused and gazed out glumly between the horse’s dusty ears. ‘Though I can’t say the same for the present one! He has great notions of himself, has Master Owen, and can be mighty haughty when he has a mind to.’
    ‘Oh!’ Kate felt her heart sink. There was no possible similarity between a haughty gentleman with notions of himself and the gay light-hearted Owen Lawlor who had courted her so assiduously in his letters.
    ‘I was thinking maybe it was the Fitzpatricks of Ballyfeeny you were looking for. Them au pair girls, as they call them, are always coming and going—more going than coming, you might say.’ He cackled delightedly at his witticism. ‘They’re a terrible wild lot are the Fitzpatricks, and if you was one of them au pair girls from foreign parts you’d be wise to turn round and go straight back where you came from.’
    ‘But it’s not the Fitzpatricks I’m looking for,’ Kate said desperately. ‘It’s Owen Lawlor of Laragh.’
    ‘There’s no doubt but that Mr. Owen lives at Laragh,’ the old man conceded, ‘but it still doesn’t make sense that a young girl like yourself should be gallivanting out there by herself; and it’s no way right, him being a bachelor.’
    Kate, not being prepared to discuss the presence of Aunt Florrie as Chaperon, said nothing.
    ‘So he hasn’t come to meet you, is that it?’ the old man asked shrewdly.
    ‘I—I don’t think my letter can have reached him in time,’ Kate said defensively.
    ‘And no doubt you don’t fancy sleeping on the platform,’ he said slyly. It was dear that he was now regarding her as a potential customer and looked on it as a good bit of business to paint as gloomy a picture as possible.
    Kate found her natural buoyancy deser ti ng her. Once the old man had departed she would be alone in the deserted station. It was easy enough too to picture those meandering chalk-white roads deserted and moonlit and herself trudging along carrying an equally bewildered Bedsocks. Yet her future had seemed so dearly marked out by Owen’s letters, especially the last one, in which he had said he was looking forward eagerly to her arrival. There was nothing at all to fear, She told herself, and for a moment longed to flaunt some of Owen’s letters in the face of the obstructive old jarvey—but they were much too pre ci ous and intimate to show to other eyes.
    The old jarvey took out his handkerchief and buffeted his nose crossly. The grey eyes that looked up at him so hopefully were painfully like those of his favourite granddaughter, young Noreen, who had taken the boat to England one day and from then on had studiously ignored her family. ‘You wouldn’t by any chance have come across a young one by the name of Noreen Fogarty while you were on the other side?’ he inquired hopefully.
    ‘The other side?’ Kate repeated, completely at a loss.
    The old man twitched his nose angrily. ‘Across the water, of course.’
    Comprehension dawned. ‘Oh, you mean