“'Tis going we are; God be good to us!”
“Ye needn't be cursing that way,” said an old hag, with a sack on her back, large enough to contain a child.
“Eyah! the Lord look down on the poor,” said a little fat fellow, with a flannel night-cap and stockings without any feet; “there's no pity now at all, at all.”
“The heavens be your bed, any way,” said a hard-featured little woman, with an accent that gave the blessing a very different signification from the mere words.
“Blessed Joseph! sure it isn't robbers and thieves we are, that ye need hunt us out of the place.”
Such were the exclamations on every side, intermingled with an undergrowl of the “Scotch naygur”—“the ould scrape-gut,” and other equally polite and nattering epithets.
“This is no a place for ye, ye auld beldames and blackguards; awa wi' ye—awa wi' ye at once.”
“Them's the words ye'll hear in heaven yet, darlint,” said an old fiend of a woman with one eye, and a mouth garnished by a single tooth. “Them's the very words St. Peter will spake to yourself.”
“Begorra, he'll not be strange in the other place anyhow,” muttered another. “'Tis there hell meet most of his countrymen.”
This speech was the signal for a general outburst of laughter.