"You are in the right of it, Jenny," said he, in a most remorseful
voice.
Jenny looked up.
"Yes," he continued. "I was in the wrong. O'Toole is the most selfish
man in the whole world. Cowardly, too! But there never was a selfish man
who was not at heart a bit of a coward. Sure enough, sooner or later the
cowardice comes out. It is a preposterous thing that O'Toole should
think that you and I are going to rescue his heiress for him while he
sits at his ease by the inn fire. No; let us go back to him and tell him
to his face the selfish cowardly man he is."
It seemed, however, that Jenny was not entirely pleased to hear her own
sentiments so frankly uttered by Mr. Wogan. Besides, he seemed to
exaggerate them, for she said with a little reluctance, "I would not say
that he was a coward."
"But I would," exclaimed Wogan, hotly. "Moreover, I do. With all my
heart I say it. A great lubberly monster of a coward. He is envious,
too, Jenny."
Jenny had by this time stopped weeping.
"Why envious?" she asked with an accent of rebellion which was very much
to Wogan's taste.
"It's as plain as the palm of my hand. Why should he make a dwarf of
you, Jenny?--for it's the truth he has done that; he has made a little
dwarf out of the finest girl in the land by robbing her of her heels."
Jenny was on the point of interrupting with some indignation, but Wogan
would not listen to her. "A dwarf," he continued, "it was your own word,
Jenny. I could say nothing to comfort you when you spoke it, for it was
so true and suitable an epithet. A little dwarf he has made of you, all
body and no legs like a bear, a dwarf-bear, of course; and why, if it is
not that he envies you your figure and is jealous of it in a mean and
discreditable way? Sure, he wants to have all the looks and to appear
quite incomparable to the eyes of his beautiful German. So he makes a
dwarf of you, a little bear dwarf--"
Jenny, however, had heard this phrase often enough by now. She
interrupted Wogan hotly, and it seemed her anger was now as much
directed against him as it had been before against O'Toole.
"He is not envious," said she. "A fine friend he has in you, I am
thinking. He has no need to be envious. Captain O'Toole could carry me
to the house in his arms if he wished, which is more than you could do
if you tried till midday to-morrow," and she turned her shoulder to
Wogan, who, in no way abashed by her contempt, cried triumphantly,-"But he didn't wish. He let you drag through the mud and snow without
so much as a patten to keep you off the ground. Why? Tell me that,
Jenny! Why didn't he wish?"