“Somewhere after ten,” replied he, sulkily; “you're the first I ever heerd ask the clock, in the eight years I have lived here. Are ye ready for your morning?”
“My what?” said I, with some surprise.
“Didn't I say it, plain enough? Is it the brogue that bothers you?”
As he said this with a most sarcastic grin he poured, from a large jug he held in one hand, a brimming goblet full of some white compound, and handed it over to me. Preferring at once to explore, rather than to question the intractable Corny, I put it to my lips, and found it to be capital milk punch, concocted with great skill, and seasoned with what O'Grady afterwards called “a notion of nutmeg.”
“Oh! devil fear you, that he'll like it. Sorrow one of you ever left as much in the jug as 'ud make a foot-bath for a flea.”
“They don't treat you over well, then, Corny,” said I, purposely opening the sorest wound of his nature.
“Trate me well! faix, them that 'ud come here for good tratement, would go to the devil for divarsion. There's Master Phil himself, that I used to bate, when he was a child, many's the time, when his father, rest his sowl, was up at the coorts—ay, strapped him, till he hadn't a spot that wasn't sore an him—and look at him now; oh, wirra! you'd think I never took a ha'porth of pains with him. Ugh!—the haythins!—the Turks!”
“This is all very bad, Corny; hand me those boots.”
“And thim's boots!” said he, with a contemptuous expression on his face that would have struck horror to the heart of Hoby. “Well, well.” Here he looked up as though the profligacy and degeneracy of the age were transgressing all bounds. “When you're ready, come over to the master's, for he's waiting breakfast for you. A beautiful hour for breakfast, it is! Many's the day his father sintenced a whole dockful before the same time!”
With the comforting reflection that the world went better in his youth, Corny drained the few remaining drops of the jug, and, muttering the while something that did not sound exactly like a blessing, waddled out of the room with a gait of the most imposing gravity.