Alas, that spring!

Part I Chapter I

“Hey! You there! You’ve no right to fish the-r-re! Go awa-a-ay—do you hear? Stop it— stop it, I tell you!”

The clear treble, with its long-drawn-out syllables, floated down the green rush-tufted slope to the river; piercing the swirl, the impatient mutterings round the great black boulders which blocked its quarter-way course; the chatter along the' pebbly margin, where things were easy and clear going.

Teddy O’Hara—far out in the stream, her petti¬ coats tucked into the top of her hip-high wadingboots, the tail of something suspiciously like a che¬ mise well in evidence—pursed up her red lips and dropped a fly with the' nicest, dexterity in the exact spot where a salmon had that moment risen; then, as the cry was repeated, looked round and put out her tongue, grinning widely*.

“The kid from Greylands,” remarked Honora, and turning lazily from one side to another—re¬ gardless of Denise, who lay with her head pillowed on her knees—she cupped her rounded chin in one

i

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

hand and threw a glance lip the field, dipping and rising to the stone wall with the child’s figure poised upon it.

Honora O’Hara—was there ever such a combina¬ tion!—“But of course she’ll marry; I won’t have any daughter of mine an old maid, and I just love the name Honora,” was what her mother had said, splitting the two with “Gertrude” as a peace¬ offering to the half-sister whose lover she had stolen.

“Cheeky brat! For the Lord’s sake stop wrig¬ gling, Nora—my head was just right with your knee as it was,” grumbled D’enise, in her soft half¬ brogue; upon which Honora turned back, ‘compla¬ cently stretching out her slender limbs, snuggling deep among the rushes and river mint and meadow¬ sweet.

Once again there came the cry, “Go away!”

“Come back,” amended Denise; while the two small boys who had been lying on the bank kicking their bare legs in the air exerted themselves so far as to scramble to their knees and put their thumbs to their noses; then bumping against each other, rolled over in one of their interminable tussles, half affection, half natural pugnacity.

Immense masses of cumulus cloud, silver and pale grey, were piled along the horizon, billowing up round that small circle of world in which the young O’Haras disported themselves, lived, moved, and had their being with no single thought beyond it, for the moment; and it was always that with them

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

—the moment. High above was a clear blue sky, with wind-blown wisps of silver. On the opposite side of the water the osier beds showed upright wands of flame, russet and madder; far beyond these lay the mountains, the coursing-ground of cloud shadows, indigo blue, almost black. There was blue in the depths of the river, amber and olive and glints of pure light in the shallows: the green was intense, even for Ireland, for it had rained dur¬ ing the whole of the week before, and anyone apart from an O’Hara would have taken his or her death lying on the damp soil, despite its spring mattress of sun-warmed growth. But nothing harmed them, fearing nothing, reverencing nothing as they did.

“What’s the good of fussing? Let’s be happy while we can.” There you had the whole cult of the clan.

“If that kid falls off the wall on the far side, sure it’s her that will be trespassin’!” yelled Teddy, and this jerked the boys to a semi-upright position again. If only she’d fall!

“The damned imperence of her when we’ve al¬ ways fished here!”

“A fool of a girl—a kid like that!”

“All togged up in white, too! My God, whoever saw anything to beat that?”

“Who does she think she is, anyway, the lit¬ tle—”

Among themselves, the young O’Haras were any¬ thing but choice in their language; small wonder that the aunt in charge wrote to her step-brother-

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

in-law, far away in India, with nothing but the fun of it all, the lightly regarded expense, as his share of the family life:

“Derrick and Gerald ought to be at school, though of course I’d just hate to part with the darlings. But the truth is, they’re getting beyond me, and beyond everyone else too. The girls are bad enough with their language and their accents, but those two young imps of boys want a man’s hand over them. I caught Gerry matching himself swear word for swear word against one of the stable lads the other day, and upon my soul, I never heard anything like it; where he could have learnt it . . etc., etc.

“Pure heredity; hanged if I wouldn’t back any son of mine for a loose-hung tongue against the whole field.” That’s what the fond father had to say at this juncture, flicking over the pages of the closely-written letter. “What a vile hand your sis¬ ter Gertie does write nowadays! I can’t be expected to wade through this with all I have on my hands. I suppose if I send her a fresh draft to the bank it ’ull foot the bill, eh, what? Anyway, what’s the good o’ fussing. It won’t hurt the kids to run wild for a bit, run the liquor out of the blood while they’re young.”

“I’m never quite sure how old the boys are,” said Lady Taghmony, glancing up from under the hands of the maid who was piling her fine pale gold hair in a mass of curls round her small head, fram-

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

ing the tiny pink and white face with its brilliant blue eyes and half-pathetic, wholly impish mouth; the most irresponsible mother of six it was possible to imagine; a wholly fantastic, delightful incongru¬ ity in the way of mothers.

“But I rather like having babies,” she had said when someone commiserated her upon her fate. “I really don’t show it until just at the very last, and there’s nothing like it for clearing the complexion. Besides, they’re such darling cuddly things when they’re tiny; and really no trouble. I can’t make out why people make such a fuss about children being a trouble; after all, there are any amount of people with no kids of their own just longing to look after them.”

Oh yes, it was fun to have children—all a part of the fun of life. She didn’t mind the pain—was gallant enough for that; feared nothing, dreaded nothing, and forgot—with a genius for forgetting.

There you had her, slipping through Time like a silver fish in blue water. So much fun—fun to be with the children who adored and petted her; fun to be alone with her husband, adoring and petting with the perfect facility of a man of much and varied practice: “Of course, Muggins has shaken a loose leg, we all know that,” was what she said—* using, as she did to everyone, her own special nick¬ name, the origin of which was a joke between those two alone—fun to be adored; and if not exactly petted, waited upon hand and foot by every young man she came in contact with; extravagantly con-

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

sidered by her husband’s A.D.C.’s, whom she herself chose for their looks. Fun to have everything all ways at once—forgetful of any scrap of life’s gay kaleidoscope which happened to be out of the pat¬ tern at the moment—each moment the whole of life.

“I simply can’t remember the children’s ages—I never can remember,” she complained now, and with truth, for had she not on the way home last time —as a sort of apology for the delay of a fortnight in Paris—sent Honora, sixteen then and well grown for her age, a dozen pairs of kid gloves, lemon and white and silvery grey, fit for a child of six?—“only Edwina’s,” she went on, “and that’s because of her being born while dear King Edward was still Prince of Wales*—I’d never have dared to ask him to be godfather if he had been king—and the lovely brooch he sent her for a christening pres¬ ent; such a frightful pity I lost it.”

“The year Ladas won the Derby, eh?”

“Yes—well, that shows you the boys must be get¬ ting on, nine or ten or eleven or something like that. Muggins, I really believe old Gertie’s right and they ought to go to a preparatory school; they don’t learn anything from those governesses. Governesses are no good, you know; if they’re pretty they flirt with all the men about the place, and if they’re not pretty no one takes any notice of them. I really think we’d better settle about a school; it would be a nui¬ sance if they couldn’t get into Eton.”

“Of course they’ll get into Eton—all our peo-

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

pie always have been at Eton. Ten or eleven!— by Jove, it’s impossible to credit it, with you look¬ ing like you do—I really believe you grow prettier every day, Di; ’pon my soul, there was never any¬ one like you!”

Lord Taghmony, sitting on the edge of his wife’s bed swinging his feet, for they had just changed out of their riding kit, let his eyes run over the back of her white shoulders, the nape of her neck under its high-piled curls, for her maid was busied over the very last touch; then turned to the reflection of her gay little face in the mirror. “Lord, to think of all those kids! By God, I never saw a woman who kept her looks as you do, and you never seem to fuss about it either.”

“Oh, I don’t know, one does feel so frightfully young inside. Nine or ten—! Really, Muggins, I think I’d like to have another baby—nothing but those squealing little failures of twins since Gerry was born such ages and ages ago.”

“Well, my dear, it might be managed. There’s life in—”

“Oh, Holmes!” Lady Taghmony broke in with a sharp little scream. “How you tweaked me! There’s one hair as tight as tight! You’ll have to unpin that last curl. And, Muggins, do for good¬ ness’ sake go and have your bath, and don’t shock Holmes into fits while she’s doing my hair.”

“I like that, when you started on that blessed baby ramp. All I said—well, what the devil could I say? If I’d said—”

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

His Excellency broke off, and moving over to one of the long open windows which gave on to the wide balcony—with its massed maidenhair fern, its stone pillars and arches, the carefully-kept gar¬ den, with its eternally watered lawns and massed palms, immediately below them, and beyond all this the wide plains white with heat, the blue band of the mountains—stood staring out: thinking, plan¬ ning; his rather too full, too red underlip protrud¬ ing. He snapped his fingers and whistled to a puppy playing upon the grass, then swung round again; stumbled over his wife’s ayah who squatted on the floor; and, cursing her good-humoredly,, jerked up a pile of white muslin from her knee with the crop of his riding-whip, while a loosened roll of pale blue satin ribbon uncurled itself out over the polished boards.

“What the devil’s this?”

“My dress for to-day.”

“Blue ribbon and white muslin, and you an old married woman, with the Lord only knows how many children!”

“I don’t suppose He troubles His head about it, one way or another,” retorted her Excellency flip¬ pantly. “Anyway, I’m not going to dress like a frump, or look like a frump, or behave like a frump for anyone, so there!” she added, and turning her head, put out her tongue at her husband; not one day older, in all the essentials of life, than her daughter Teddy, hip-high in the swirling waters of the river at home in Ireland.

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

As her husband moved through the widecurtained arch into his dressing-room, she called after him: “In that little matter we were speaking of: well, well, if you’re a good boy we’ll see what—” then, breaking off to glance back and powder her nose—they were all like that, hardly ever ending a sentence—laughed at Holmes’s scan¬ dalised reflection in the mirror. Holmes, who had been with her ever since she married, would have died for her, and yet could never get used to her, never approve of her.

“Only a nice little baby, Holmes, just one this time, a very small baby,” she insinuated, as wheedlingly as though it were all Holmes’s affair. “After all, no one could object to an innocent little baby ; why, that’s what one’s married for. If you were married, Holmes— Why, some people, even if they’re not married, with a little, very little ef¬ fort—”

“My lady!” broke in the woman in a panic of outraged propriety, with a sharply hostile glance in the direction of the bland ayah, winding up the blue ribbon between her brown hands, fingers and thumbs outstretched. “Your ladyship must remember that some of these black images understand good English more than they ever let on to.”

“Pheugh, Arracon—Arracon has babies of her own; how many is it, Arracon?”

The woman, smiling her inscrutable downglancing smile, held up four slender fingers, and her Excellency laughed.

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

“Oh, well, Tve beaten her already, eh, Holmes? —and who would think it to look at me! La, la, what a hot day it’s going to be!”

She stood up, stretching, and moved across the immensely wide room, with its shining, lake-like expanse of bare polished floor; then stood poised, pirouetting in front of the tall swing glass, light as a fairy in her short white petticoat and apology for a bodice, tied up with blue ribbons over the shoul¬ ders.

“Who would think it to look at me ? Come now, Holmes, who would?”

One of the A.D.C.’s had knocked at her husband’s door and was speaking in a low voice, interrupted by a loud burst of schoolboy laughter.

“By Gad, I never heard anything to beat that! I say Di—do you hear, Di?—did you ever come across anything to equal this? You know that long, sour-faced fellow Dalrymple—”

“No, no, your Excellency, really—I’d never have told your Excellency if—” broke in a young hor¬ rified voice. I entreat you, it’s not fit—I do beg of you.”

“All right, Fortescue, all right, though who the devil made you the censor of my stories—oh, well, your story?—and a damned good story too.” Lord Taghmony was still laughing. “You’ll have to wait, Di, that’s all. . . . Oh, well, Fortescue, look here, it’s a jolly sight too good to keep to myself.”

“I always knew he was that sort of person, any-

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

ii how,” came Lady Taghmony's clear little voice, with a ring of mirth in it.

“What sort of person?”

“Well, the sort of person who would do the sort of killing thing that Billy’s been telling you of. Oh, for shame, Captain Fortescue! I didn’t think it of you, really I didn’t—a nice young man like you!”

• ••••••

Little wonder that the young O’Haras were what they were. Poachers? Oh, well, what was poach¬ ing? A part of life. Their mother poached, deli¬ cately, as a butterfly: nothing ugly there, for she was sweet and clean through and through; but still there were hearts, dreams, thoughts, belonging by rights to other women and feverishly misplaced. Their father poached, more grossly, persistently; and yet for all that he had made his wife entirely happy for twenty years, and there are few better men of whom one can say as much. The two of them were like halcyons on smooth and sunny seas, all sail set—no real cargo or ballast: nothing much in the way of principles: certain niceties, too oddly de¬ fined and intangible to be described as points of honour, and no maxims whatever: voracious of all that life had to offer, snatching where it was not offered; and yet with so much gaiety overflowing upon the immediate world around them, that it .set one wondering what sort of people, take it all in all, are productive of the largest sum of happiness— others and their own.

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

“The cash in hand,” “the eaten cake,” you can’t have it both ways: the tragedy being that so many have it neither: too sad for earth, too glum for God.

t

Chapter II

Henrietta Rorke did not fall from her perch but stepped down from it into her own boundaries. For it was like this: the Taghmony estate of Clcnross had a far longer river frontage than that of Greylands, miles upon miles of it, poor land, as often as not in flood, patched with bogs or bristling with rocks; useless from an agricultural point of view for anything but grazing, and yet with such blackcock!—and more than an occasional snipe.

For all this there was a Naboth’s vineyard, one field wide and close upon half a mile in length, run¬ ning along the river edge like a meagre arm, auda¬ cious and mocking, a thief of an arm: cutting into it from the Rorke estate.

The fishing was no better here than elsewhere; but it was here that the young O’Haras, with the per¬ versity of youth—and there are some who never grow up—chose to fish; determined upon a greater persistence throughout these holidays, when, for the first time in the memory of any one of them, the long, low, cream-tinted house, with its cracked and discoloured plaster, its barrack-like stabling—all that neglected and heartbroken air of a forsaken home—was inhabited by others apart from the care¬ takers, Patsy Ryan and his wife, who had kept the pig in the morning-room like any lady.

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

During the week which had passed since they heard of it the O’Haras had haunted that strip of river, loudly ostentatious in their trespassing. On this day, for the first time, however, there were peo¬ ple to be seen, the first real hope of irritating any¬ one: men and maid-servants moving about, hang¬ ing blinds and curtains in the long, blankly-staring windows—“windows like the eyes o’ widow women,” as someone had said—other men in white overalls on long ladders, chipping away at the old paint, a couple of gardeners busy on the lawn.

Derrick and Gerry had spied out the land before breakfast that very morning, been the first to say, with any certainty, “They’re there.” Included in their report was the tale of a dolls’ house standing in the yard, too big to go in at the back door. “A dolls’ house of all things!” Just asking to have a stone hove at it, one of those tiny sparkling win¬ dows—for all the sun lay upon the back of Greylands—broken for it.

Gerry got it at the first shot, a fine throw; then, rendered careless by his success, had another try, missing the dolls’ house and smashing a window in the mansion itself. After this two dogs tore out of the house barking, and a black man in a white linen uniform with a shawl oddly muffled about his shoulders came running to the door, shouting at them in a strange language; whereupon—bound in honour to show themselves afraid of nothing—they launched another handful of stones; harmful, this

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

IS

^time, to nothing more than the one immense pear tree—they knew those pears, too—which trembled out into a shower of petals, while a slender, palefaced little girl appeared upon the step, also in white, with a green parrot upon her shoulder.

• ••••..

The Taghmonys out in India playing at kings and queens—all dressed up in uniforms and cocked hats, white muslin and pale blue ribbons, with quaint black puppets for doll's—beating up a small frothy world of their own around them: a world of danc¬ ing and music and cards, gymkhanas, polo, races; flowers and fruit and flirtation and laughter—and a land like the daughter of the horseleech beneath it all.

• ••••••

The pale, dark-haired child, Henrietta Rorke, a quiet, tense volcano of a child, in her immaculate white frock; the dolls’ house, the black servant; the sunshine lying warm on Greylands’ disreputable back with its bleak face astare at the river, the mountains beyond them.

• ••••••

Five young O’Haras in shabby homespun, stained and faded to the tints of the mountainside, grey rock and reddish, greyish, green lichen, disporting themselves upon someone else’s property, fishing in someone else’s waters: bright blue sky, cumulus clouds of silver; racing shadows upon the mountain¬ side; April airs, mild as milk; the river like life iti6

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

self, hurried and intent upon its own affairs, hasten¬ ing to an end of which it had no knowledge, with a present that all was delight.

These three odd little pictures, shifting and slid¬ ing, merge into one another.

• •••••.•

It was a good two miles’ walk from “The Big House Up Above,” as Clonross itself was always called, to the boundary of that narrow spit of Rorke property, and a blazing hot day. But for all that the thing had to be done.

“We’ll learn ’em!” That was Teddy. They were whispering together at one end of the breakfast-table. The two small boys were still hot and dishevelled from the early morning reconnaisance; shoes and stockings dragged on anyhow in the hall, a wet lick of hair plastered off from their crimson foreheads, the backs of their hands moder¬ ately clean—and the less said about the palms of them the better.

Teddy’s voice was shrill, and Lady Fair glanced up from her letters: “Learn 'em! Teddy, my darling, you can’t learn a person anything—you teach.”

“Oh, I know, auntie—but it’s got a sort of smashing sound, different somehow. . . . What? A dolls’ house! Good Lord!”

“If we don’t start the way we mean to go on they’ll get into thinking they own the world.” That was what they said later on, up in the wide sunny schoolroom; for Clonross had no compunc-

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

tion at all in turning its broad and comfortably ugly back upon the scenery, woody mountain, and live impetuous river, sprawling its long low front in the sunshine; looking due west, with a flattish park clumped in elms and beeches; bog-land and a white road, tiny fields like green patches fastened round with rough grey stitches of stone wall; a placid stretch of lakes; dullish hills in the far dis¬ tance.

“We always have fished there, and, begorra, we always will fish there/’ This was Teddy.

“But such a beast of a walk,” sighed Denise, comfortably sunk into that hollow where the springs of the schoolroom sofa had given way in the most obliging fashion imaginable: Denise with her goldy curls and odd, half-awakened eyes more violet than blue.

Honora had been washing her straight black hair and sat drying it on the window-sill; the two small boys were on the floor, disentangling their fishinglines.

“It ’ud never do to stop now!”

“Start in meek as Moses fishing in our own waters!”

“Well, those are our waters. Why, we’ve fished there for years and years and donkey’s ears. An’ that makes—what do they call it ?—a right o’ way. The cheek of them to come back at all! Rorkes, whoever heard of Rorkes? It’s like an old crow.”

“O’Rorke’s no better.”

“Well, O’Rorke’s the proper thing. If they’re i8

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

ashamed of being Irish, whatever do they want to come to Ireland for?”

“There’s a washerwoman down in O’Flarty’s Bot¬ tom !”

“That’s it, Brigid O’Rorke; likely enough it’s her that washes the black fellow’s clothes for him.”

“An’ the kids.”

“Keepin’ it in the family!”

“Lucky for her I didn’t have my ‘catty’ with me, or I’d a picked that squawking green baste off her shoulder, sure as my name’s Gerry O’Hara.”

“You couldn’t, a hundred yards or more.”

“I could.”

“You lie!”

“You’re another!” They flung upon each other a tangled mass of bullet heads, legs and arms. Gerry’s shoes, which were not yet tied, flew off, one alighting upon the open piano with a deep crash of bass notes.

Honora on the sunny window-sill combed her hair and sang on:

“When the man from County Clare Heard his mother called a mere Faith, he scathe red all the features of his face—”

breaking off as Teddy interposed with a scream:

“My precious worms! Ach! You idiots! You’ve upset the tin! Can’t you see that you’re rolling yourselves over my worms? An’ after I’ve been to all the trouble o’ digging them an’ all!” she cried; upon which the two boys parted, showing

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

i9

a mingled pulp of grass and worms mashed into the shabby carpet.

“Worms! What the blazes do you want with worms? You can’t fish with worms.”

“Can’t I, though! If I can’t catch a whopper under their very eyes with one thing, I’ll catch it with another!” Teddy’s full-lipped mouth was tight-set beneath her snub, freckled nose—the nose that they all said was like nothing so much as a bit of putty thrown at a wall, for all the character and decision of the entire family lay with her. “Trust me, I’ll put the precious Rorkes in their place!” she added grimly, and, sitting down on the floor began to collect as much of her property as was negotiable. “Show them! I’ll show them!”

The general sense of antagonism towards the up¬ starts at Greylands was augmented by meeting Brigid Ryan at the drive gates, coming up to see if she couldn’t beg a wee bit of a cabin out of the people at Clonross.

“For sure they’ve turned me an’ Himself outer the place, sayin’ as how we kept it so as it wasn’t not fit for a pig. Now, did you ever hear tell o’ the like o’ that? ‘Not fit for a pig!’ Is it I, Biddy Ryan, as ’ud be afther ill-treatin’ a pig? You know me, Miss Honora, an’ Miss Denise, an’ I swear to you by the Mither o’ God, Miss Honora, darlint, an’ Maester Derrick an’ Maester Gerald— as is the dead spit o’ yer dear pa, fur the fine upstandin’ looks o’ you—as there did be some o’ the

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

finest an’ handsomest an’ best contented pigs i’ the whole o’ the county born under them there front stairs, or i’ that quare bit o’ a place wid the eight sides to it as these new people do be afther callin’ the marnin’ room. ‘Marnin’ room!' I ask you! An’ wid no afternoon room to it at all, at all—an’ no complaint from anyone o’ the boneens as ever I heard on—not so much as a squeak—unless it were in the way o’ pleasure at the sight o’ their victuals, an’ that no more than human—nor no complaint from any of us that ate them, nor from Monk the pork-butcher i’ Castleford neither; an’ upon my sowl, it’s nothin’ more nor less than the thruth, I’m spaekin’, Miss Honora. Sure before God that ain’t no way whatever fur upstarts cornin’ new into a country ter start on traetin’ dacent peo¬ ple. ‘Not fit for a pig,’ indade! What sort a talk is that now?”

And this was not all. Mr. Rorke buying that farm called “The Place on the Hill” with the rest of the property had told O’Shaunessy that he must go unless he made up his mind to pay his rent, and regularly too.

Waving to the young O’Haras from the top of the muck heap in front of his house, O’Shaunessy had raced down to tell them of his troubles; scram¬ bling over the broken ridges of stones which had once been walls, cutting the land up into small fields of twenty square yards or less: standing gesticulat¬ ing wildly in the gay sunshine, a tall, gaunt scare¬ crow of a man, the torn sleeves of his ragged shirt

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

fluttering in the wind; his long, sallow, unshaven face, wide twisted mouth, and deep-set eyes bitter with rage, and yet, somehow or other, exultant with a sense of real dramatic grievance.

“Him carryin’ on as he’ll turn me out o’ me little farm, and me wid five little children no higher than my knee an’ another close upon us, praise be to God! The wee, miserable, forsaken bit o’ a place as me great gran’father and me grandfather, an’ me father too, have worn the souls outer their bodies battlin’ wid, summer an’ winter, day an’ night—sein’ as how the land’s near as cruel an’ un¬ kind as the English themselves, God blast the souls o’ the whole nation o’ ’em. Turn me out! An’ all fur a matter o’ rint! ‘If you don’t not pay your rint,’ that’s what he says, him down yonder,” he cried, jerking a blackened thumb with a nail like a Chinaman’s in the direction of Greylands, “when it’s you do know, Miss Honora an’ Miss Teddy— an’ you too, askin’ yer pardon, Miss Denise—an every other decent body too, as do be acquainted with me all the years as ever me an’ mine do have been on the place such as it is—an’ not worth a tinker’s curse at that—sure it’s never so much as a taeste o’ our money as they’ve ever seen nor looked to see i’ rent.”

“The cads!” Teddy’s chin went up with a jerk. “If they think they’ve come to a place where they can turn a man out of his house simply because he’s not got the money to pay them, their beastly old rent—”

ALAS, THAT SPRING—!

But it was O’Shaunessy’s chin in the air at this, at much the same angle, too.

“Sure, Miss Teddy, I could, pay their demmed rint an’ be demmed to them, easy as failin’ off a wall; there’s not one about these parts as couldn’t tell you that. But who is it as ’ud be afther wastin’ good money payin’ rint ter the likes o’ them, when there’s not one among us as had ever paid rint to their betters?”