"Oh, my own darling young gentleman, you are a sight for sore eyes; your 'Fancy' has been waiting on you these two hours!"
"Then she must wait," he growled, nevertheless approaching, with his hands in his pockets and a rather important strut.
"Oh, then, I know ye don't mane that. An' sure now, Miss," appealing to Helen, and languishing at her with her head on one side, "and isn't he an ornament to any country?"
Helen became crimson with suppressed laughter, and was totally unable to utter any reply. However, her levity was not lost on Barry, who made a note of it against some future occasion, when she should be repaid in kind.
"Well, Judy, what is it?" impatiently.
"Only a whisper, darlin'. 'Tis just this," suddenly rising to her feet, "ever since I lost me health, come Christmas twenty years, and manny and manny a time before that, I washed for your mother——"
"Just cut all that part, will you?"
"Well thin, I'm here at the Cross, a poor, lone widder, that has buried all belonging to me but Andy, and living on the charity of the public, as ye know, this blessed nineteen years! And now, a thief of a black stranger from beyant Terryscreen, has come and set himself down alongside of me. A blind man itself—any way it's what he lets on—and every one knows I'm not; and they are all for giving to the poor dark creature. And sure, he has me ruined and destroyed entirely!" now raising her voice a full octave, and commencing to cry with alarming energy.
"You know if I did right I'd give you six weeks of Terryscreen jail for begging in the public highway," said Barry, magisterially.
"An' if ye did that same," drying her eyes, and stretching out her hands, "I take these beautiful angels as mee witnesses, I'd rather have six weeks from your honour, than six days from another; and that's as sure as I'm standing here!"