He eyed me and said,
“I’ll toss ye for the sixpence!”
“Done!” called Martin, feebly, from within.
The doctor and I tossed, double or quits, sudden death. I won. And there came a faint cock-crow from the inner chamber.
That year she wrote a sketch called “A Patrick’s Day Hunt,” and I drew the illustrations for it. It was published as a large coloured picture-book, by Constable & Co., and was very well reviewed. The story is supposed to be told by a countryman to a friend, and is a remarkable tour de force, both in idiom and in realising the countryman point of view. We were afraid that it might be found too subtle a study of dialect for the non-Irish reader, so we were the more pleased when we were told of an English Quaker family, living in the very heart of their native country, who, every day, directly after prayers, read aloud a portion of “A Patrick’s Day Hunt.”
(In this connection I will quote a fragment of a letter which bears indirectly on the same point.)
E. Œ. S. to V. F. M. (Spring, 1903.)
“—— I have also heard of a very smart lady, going to Ireland for the first time, who invested in an R.M., saying, ‘I have bought this book. I want to see how one should talk to the Irish.’
“‘Blasht your Sowl!’ replied my friend Slipper.
“‘May the Divil crack the two legs undher ye!’ (See any page, anywhere, in the Irish R.M.)”