“Is it of buying you are speaking? And where am I to get the money?”

“Ah! that’s another thing!”

“Faith it is, honey!—And now the Christmas holidays is coming, when I shall be at home by day as well as night, and then what am I to do? Since I have been a saggarting, I have been good for nothing at all—neither for work nor Greek—only to play cards! Faith, it’s going mad I will be!”

“I say, Murtagh!”

“Yes, Shorsha dear!”

“I have a pack of cards.”

“You don’t say so, Shorsha ma vourneen?—you don’t say that you have cards fifty-two?”

“I do, though; and they are quite new—never been once used.”

“And you’ll be lending them to me, I’ll warrant?”

“Don’t think it!—But I’ll sell them to you, joy, if you like.”