“Come, Lambert, I’ll tell you what—we’ll ride together, and I’ll bet you a crown I pound you before you’re over three leaps.”
“Ah, now, take it easy with yourself,” said Lambert; “there are others ride better than you.”
“But no one better than yourself; is that it, eh?”
“Well, Jerry, how do the new articles fit?” said Nicholas Dillon.
“Pretty well, thank you: they’d be a deal more comfortable though, if you’d pay for them.”
“Did you hear, Miss O’Kelly, what Jerry Blake did yesterday?” said Nicholas Dillon aloud, across the table.
“Indeed, I did not,” said Guss—“but I hope, for the sake of the Blakes in general, he didn’t do anything much amiss?”
“I’ll tell you then,” continued Nicholas. “A portion of his ould hunting-dress—I’ll not specify what, you know—but a portion, which he’d been wearing since the last election, were too shabby to show: well, he couldn’t catch a hedge tailor far or near, only poor lame Andy Oulahan, who was burying his wife, rest her sowl, the very moment Jerry got a howld of him. Well, Jerry was wild that the tailors were so scarce, so he laid his hands on Andy, dragged him away from the corpse and all the illigant enthertainment of the funeral, and never let him out of sight till he’d put on the last button.”
“Oh, Mr Blake!” said Guss, “you did not take the man away from his dead wife?”
“Indeed I did not, Miss O’Kelly: Andy’d no such good chance; his wife’s to the fore this day, worse luck for him. It was only his mother he was burying.”