“Don't I, thin—maybe not,” said Kerry, tauntingly, and with a look of such well-affected secrecy, that Mrs. Branagan was completely deceived by it.
“What is he, then? spake it out free this minit,” said she. “Bad cess to you, do you want to trate me like an informer.”
“No, indeed, Mrs. Branagan; its not that same I'd even to you—sure I knew your people—father and mother's side—two generations back. Miles Buoy—yallow Miles, as they called him—was the finest judge of a horse in Kerry—I wonder now he didn't make a power of money.”
“And so he did, and spint it after. 'Twas blackguards, with ould gaiters, and one spur on them, that ate up every shilling he saved.”
“Well, well! think of that, now,” said Kerry, with the sententious-ness of one revolving some strange and curious social anomaly; “and that's the way it wint.”
“Wasn't it a likely way enough,” said Mrs. Branagan, with flashing eyes, “feedin' a set of spalpeens that thought of nothing but chating the world. The sight of a pair of top hoots gives me the heartburn to this day.”
“Mine warms to them, too,” said Kerry, timidly, who ventured on his humble pun with deep humility.
A contemptuous scowl was Mrs. Branagan's reply, and Kerry resumed.
“Them's the changes of world—rich yesterday—poor to-day! Don't I know what poverty is well myself. Augh! sure enough they wor the fine times, when I rode out on a beast worth eighty guineas in goold, wid clothes on my back a lord might envy; and now, look at me!”
Mrs. Branagan, to whom the rhetorical figure seemed a direct appeal, did look; and assuredly the inspection conveyed nothing flattering, for she turned away abruptly, and smoked her pipe with an air of profound disdain.