“Well, Peg,” said Darby, “how is it with you the day?”
A low grunting noise issued from the foot of a little mud wall beside the fireplace. I turned and beheld the figure of a woman of some seventy years of age, seated beside the turf embers; her dark eyes, bleared with smoke and dimmed with age, were still sharp and piercing; and her nose, thin and aquiline, indicated a class of features by no means common among the people. Her dress was the blue frieze coat of a laboring man, over the woollen gown usually worn by women. Her feet and legs were bare; and her head was covered with an old straw bonnet, whose faded ribbon and tarnished finery betokened its having once belonged to some richer owner. There was no vestige of any furniture,—neither table nor chair, nor dresser, nor even a bed, unless some straw laid against the wall in one corner could be thus called; a pot suspended over the wet and sodden turf by a piece of hay rope, and an earthen pipkin with water stood beside her. The floor of the hovel, lower in many places than the road without, was cut up into sloppy mud by the tread of the sow, who ranged at will through the premises. In a word, more dire and wretched poverty it was impossible to conceive.
Darby's first movement was to take off the lid and peer into the pot, when the bubbling sound of the boiling potatoes assured him that we should have at least something to eat; his next, was to turn a little basket upside down for a seat, to which he motioned me with his hand; then, approaching the old woman, he placed his hand to his mouth and shouted in her ear,—
“What 's the major after this morning, Peg?”
She shook her head gloomily a couple of times, but gave no answer.
“I 'm thinking there 's bad work going on at the town there,” cried he, in the same loud tone as before.
Peg muttered something in Irish, but far too low to be audible.
“Is she mad, poor thing?” said I, in a whisper.
The words were not well uttered when she darted on me her black and piercing eyes, with a look so steadfast as to make me quail beneath them.
“Who 's that there?” said the hag, in a croaking, harsh voice.