<> Part Two Linen Hall Library 1951 Linen Hall Library Thursday, April 7, 2016 TIFF Hanna135 Manuscript Cottage, Agnes English https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/content/hanna135 Linen Hall Library Linen Hall Library Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA https://www.niliteraryarchive.com/sites/default/files/Hanna135_0.jpg LHL Archive 129 The faint clip-clop of the pony's hooves reached the women on the hilltop. In a moment Bridli Dineen had gathered her children into her, and after a few hurried words to Agnes, swept them and herself out of the sun into the shadowy firelit depths of here cottage. Agnes waited until the trap drew up beside her. "How are ye, Sarah?" she asked, and then as she saw the small shawled figure in the crook of Sarah’s arm, she cried "Ah, did ye bring the wee fella! Give us him down here." Sarah climbed down with the baby in her arms. "l’m going on an errand to Ardpatrick, and I was wondering would ye look after him ’til I get back?" "Aye, God bless him, I’ll dae it with a heart and a half." Two or three of the children had crept out again from Bridie’s cottage and now stood blinking at Sarah and the handsome trap. Sarah glanced at them. "Tell me, Agnes, why did the Dineen woman go indoors when she saw me? She went off like a clockin hen when it hears a magpie!"* "Och, dont heed her, she said she smelt a pot boiling over." "It was a quare pot boiling over! look at her noq, keeking at us through the window, Heth, but she’s a sleeked one, that." Agnes cuffed the hen that was pecking listlessly at her hard freckled arm. "Och, she’s like many another. She was learned as a child tae stick taw the highroad for this," and herw she nodded at Bridie's children, "and she’s irked when she finds another has ta’en a short cut through the dykes, and arrived wi’ as much honour and more ease." Sarah did not know what to make of this. She searched Agnes’s Text