“And if I am,” said Mrs. Mulrooney, “and if ye heerd me, have ye no manners to answer your name, eh? Are ye steward Moore?”
“Upon my soul ma’am I thought so last night, when I came on board; but you really have contrived to make me doubt my own identity.”
“And is it there ye’re lying on the broad of yer back, and me as sick as a dog fornent ye?”
“I concede ma’am the fact; the position is a most irksome one on every account.”
“Then why don’t ye come over to me?” and this Mrs. Mulrooney said with a voice of something like tenderness—wishing at all hazards to conciliate so important a functionary.
“Why, really you are the most incomprehensible person I ever met.”
“I’m what?” said Mrs. Mulrooney, her blood rushing to her face and temples as she spoke—for the same reason as her fair townswoman is reported to have borne with stoical fortitude every harsh epithet of the language, until it occurred to her opponent to tell her that “the divil a bit better she was nor a pronoun;” so Mrs. Mulrooney, taking “omne ignotum pro horribili,” became perfectly beside herself at the unlucky phrase. “I’m what? repate it av ye dare, and I’ll tear yer eyes out? Ye dirty bla—guard, to be lying there at yer ease under the blankets, grinning at me. What’s your thrade—answer me that—av it isn’t to wait on the ladies, eh?”
“Oh, the woman must be mad,” said Sir Stewart.
“The devil a taste mad, my dear—I’m only sick. Now just come over to me, like a decent creature, and give me the dhrop of comfort ye have. Come, avick.”
“Go over to you?”