Mulvey roved out the following night, to a gathering of musicians at a crossroads dance near Glassillaun. Again he had sung, and had enjoyed the experience, though now for a different set of reasons. Girls seemed to find him attractive when he sang, though he didn’t know why and found such a fact inexplicable. He knew he was ugly, scrawny and feeble, entirely lacking his brother’s muscularity. But they still found him attractive when he stopped singing, and such a development was not to be disregarded. He never knew what to say to them, these laughing pretty girls. They would crowd around him or ask him to dance. The less he danced, the more they seemed to like him. Having no sister and no woman friend, he had never spoken to a girl for more than two minutes, and was entirely unprepared for having to do so now. And yet they were so beautiful when they talked and laughed, so different to men; so full of lightness. He found some of their thinking strange as the stars, and often they said things for which he simply had no answer.
