“It was a sore leg I have, yer honour, miss,” whined Mary Holloran; “it’s running with me now these three weeks, and I come to thry would Miss Duffy give me a bit o’ a plashther.”
“Take care it doesn’t run away with you altogether,” replied Charlotte facetiously; “and where’s Miss Duffy herself?”
“She’s sick, the craythure,” said one of the other women, who, having found and dusted a chair, now offered it to Miss Mullen; “she have a wakeness like in her head, and an impression on her heart, and Billy Grainy came afther Peggy Roche here, the way she’d mind her.”
Peggy Roche groaned slightly, and stirred a pot of smutty gruel with an air of authority.
“Could I see her, d’ye think?” asked Charlotte, sitting down and looking about her with sharp appreciation of the substantial excellence of the smoke-blackened walls and grimy woodwork. “There wouldn’t be a better kitchen in the country,” she thought, “if it was properly done up.”
“Ye can, asthore, ye can go up,” replied Peggy Roche, “but wait a while till I have the sup o’ grool hated, and maybe yerself’ll take it up to herself.”
“Is she eating nothing but that?” asked Charlotte, viewing the pasty compound with disgust.
“Faith, ’tis hardly she’ll ate that itself.” Peggy Roche; rose as she spoke, and, going to the dresser, returned with a black bottle. “As for a bit o’ bread, or a pratie, or the like o’ that, she couldn’t use it, nor let it past her shest; with respects to ye, as soon as she’d have it shwallied it’d come up as simple and as pleashant as it wint down.” She lifted the little three-legged pot off its heap of hot embers, and then took the cork out of the black bottle with nimble, dirty fingers.
“What in the name of goodness is that ye have there?” demanded Charlotte hastily.
Mrs. Roche looked somewhat confused, and murmured something about “a weeshy suppeen o’ shperits to wet the grool.”