“And what are you doing with your hands?”
“Faith, then, if I must tell you, I was e’en dealing with the cards.”
“Do you play much at cards?”
“Sorra a game, Shorsha, have I played with the cards since my uncle Phelim, the thief, stole away the ould pack, when he went to settle in the county Waterford!”
“But you have other things to do?”
“Sorra anything else has Murtagh to do that he cares about; and that makes me dread so going home at nights.”
“I should like to know all about you; where do you live, joy?”
“Faith, then, ye shall know all about me, and where I live. It is at a place called the Wilderness that I live, and they call it so, because it is a fearful wild place, without any house near it but my father’s own; and that’s where I live when at home.”
“And your father is a farmer, I suppose?”
“You may say that; and it is a farmer I should have been, like my brother Denis, had not my uncle Phelim, the thief! tould my father to send me to school, to learn Greek letters, that I might be made a saggart of, and sent to Paris and Salamanca.”