Teag. Do you know the little tall fat seargeant that feed me to be a soldier?
Tom. And how should I know them I never saw, you fool?
Teag. Dear shoy, you may know him whether you see him or not! for his face is all bored in big holes with the small pox, his nose is the colour of a lobster-toe, and his chin like a well washen potatoe: he’s the biggest rogue in our kingdom, you’ll know him when he cheats you, and the wide world; and another mark, he dights his mouth before he drinks, and blows his nose before he takes a snuff; the rogue height me sixpence a day, kill or no kill: and when I laid Sunday and Saturday both together, and all the days in one day, I can’t make a penny above fivepence of it.
Tom. You should have kept an account, and asked your arrears once a month.
Teag. That’s what I did, but he read a paternoster, out of his prayer book, wherein all our names are written; so much for a stop-hold to my gun, to bucklers, to a pair of comical harn-hose, with leather buttons from top to toe; and worst of all, he would have no less than a penny a week to a doctor; arra, said I, I never had a sore finger nor yet a sick toe, all the days of my life, then what have I to do with the doctor, or the doctor to do with me?
Tom. And did he make you pay all these things?
Teag. Ay, ay, pay and better pay; he took me before his captain, who made me pay all was in his book. Arra, master captain, said I, you are a comical sort of a fellow now, you might as well make me pay for my coffin before I be dead, as to pay for a doctor before I be sick; to which he answered in a passion, sirra, said he, I have seen many a better man buried without a coffin: sir, said I, then I’ll have a coffin, die when I will, if there be as much wood in all the world, or I shall not be buried at all. Then he called for the sergeant, saying, you, sir, go and buy that man’s coffin, and put it in the store till he die, and stop sixpence a week off his pay for it: No, no, sir, said I, I’ll rather die without a coffin; and seek none when I’m dead; but if you are for clipping another sixpence off my poor pay, keep it all to yourself, and I’ll swear all your oaths of agreement we had back again, and then seek soldiers where you will.
Tom. O then Pady, how did you end the matter?
Teag. Arra, dear shoy, by the mights of shaint Patrick and help of my own brogues, I both ended it, and mended it, for the next night before that, I gave them leg bail for my fidelity, and then went about the country a fortune-teller, dumb and deaf as I was not.
Tom. How old was you Pady when you was a soldier last?