Poor Terry, in his red shirt and blue stockings, and an attitude of the grandest kind, but covering, as we soon found, a desperate purpose, flourished his tea-cup, and stirred its contents with the scissors, constantly exclaiming,—
“Ah, Biddy, will ye have me? Ye’ll have me now—will ye not?”
Still Biddy refused.
“Divil a bit will I let the docther come near me till ye say yis! Sure, weren’t we children together in the ould counthry? and didn’t we take our potaties and butthermilk out o’ the same bowl? And yer mother, that’s now dead, always said ye were to be me wife; and now ye’re kapin’ coompany with that dirty blackguard, Jim O’Connor,—divil take him for a spalpeen. Ah, Biddy, will ye have me?”
And he flourished the cup, and stirred away vigorously with the scissors.
Biddy’s blood was up at the disrespectful mention made of Jimmy’s name, for “he had a winnin’ way wid him,” and she shouted at the top of her voice,—
“No, be the St. Patrick, I’ll niver have ye.”
With an awful gulp, Terry drained the cup, rolled up his eyes, and with one most impassioned yet ludicrous look at her, he fell upon his knees on the step.
Biddy followed, in strong hysterics.
The whole affair was so irresistibly ludicrous that I scarce could keep from laughing; but on observing the bottle, labelled “laudanum,” and looking into the bottom of the tea-cup, and discovering a white powder, I changed my prognosis, and hastened to the druggist’s near, to see what it was, and procure an antidote, should it really prove “ratsbane.”