' Whin
wan like that gits a footin' in a place, the locks can't be too manny to
shut ye in whin ye want to sleep at night. That fella's got no pedigree,
and if it wouldn't hurt some dacent woman, maybe, I'd say he was
misbegotten. But still, I'll tell ye: out there at Tralee there's what'd
have saved Sodom and Gomorrah-aye, that'd have saved Jerusalem, and there
wouldn't ha' been a single moan from Jeremiah. Out at Tralee there's as
beautiful a little lady as you'd want to see. Just a girl she is, not
more than nineteen or twenty years of age. She's got a face that'd make
ye want to lift the chorals an' the antiphones to her every marnin'.
She's got the figure of one that was never to grow up, an' there she is
the wedded wife of that crocodile great-grandfather.
"Aw, I know all about it, Mr. Burlingame, y'r anner. How do I know?
Didn't Michael Turley tell me before he died what sort o' man his cousin
was? Didn't he tell me Joel Mazarine married first whin he was eighteen
years of age; an' his daughter was married whin she was seventeen; an'
her son was married whin he was eighteen--an' Joel's a great-grandfather
now. An' see him out there with her that looks as if the kindergarten was
the place for her."
"Do you go to Tralee often?" asked Burlingame. "Aw yis. There's a job now
and then to do. I'm ridin' an old moke on errands for him whin his hired
folks is busy.
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