“Hanam mon Dioul! am I not after telling you that I have no money at all?”
“But you have as good as money, to me, at least; and I’ll take it in exchange.”
“What’s that, Shorsha dear?”
“Irish!”
“Irish?”
“Yes, you speak Irish; I heard you talking it the other day to the cripple. You shall teach me Irish.”
“And is it a language-master you’d be making of me?”
“To be sure!—what better can you do?—it would help you to pass your time at school. You can’t learn Greek, so you must teach Irish!”
Before Christmas, Murtagh was playing at cards with his brother Denis, and I could speak a considerable quantity of broken Irish.