Poor Florence would have gone on murmuring forth her little griefs in this manner by the hour together, if his worship would have listened to her. But the office was crowded with business, and he reminded her that the warrant she had sued for, charged her husband with having beat her; and she must confine herself to making good that charge, if she wished to have him punished for so doing.
"Your honour," said Florence, with a low courtesy, "it isn't myself that would hurt a hair of the head of him; ounly that your honour would hear the rights of it, and tell Phelim he shouldn't be after bating me for the likes of them. And here he is to the fore, your honour, for that same."
The magistrate found it would be vain to think of hearing "the rights of it" from Florence; and therefore he asked Phelim what he had to say to it.
Now Phelim was a man of few words. He had listened calmly to all Florence had been saying, and it was not till the magistrate had twice put the question to him, that he left off smoothing his dusty hat, and then, looking steadfastly in his worship's face, he replied, "Och! it's all about the threepence ha'penny, your honour. It was Saturday night when I gave her every farthing of the wages I earned that week—and so I does every Saturday night, come when it may, your honour—and when I ax'd her on Monday morning to give me threepence ha'penny, to get me a pint of beer and the little loaf, bekase I was going to a long job in the city, and didn't know what time I'd be back to my oun place, she wouldn't give it me any how, your honour; and sure I did give her a clout or two."
"But you would not do so again, I am sure, Phelim," observed his worship. "You should remember that she is your wife, whom you have vowed to protect and cherish; and besides, you know it is disgraceful in any man to strike a woman—especially in an Irishman. You must give me your solemn promise, Phelim, that you will not strike her again."
"Sure I'd be a baste if I whopp'd her again, your honour," replied Phelim, "when I just thought of a skame to do without it.—It's ounly keeping the threepence ha'penny in my oun pocket, your honour, and I'll have no occasion to bate it out of her at all."
The bystanders laughed at this skame of Phelim's, and even the magistrate smiled, as he good-humouredly told Florence, that, though he believed her to be an excellent wife, he thought that she was a little too hard in refusing her husband such a trifle as threepence half-penny when he was going to work so far from home.
Florence smiled also; but there was a thoughtful sadness in her smile; and, when the laughter had subsided, she told his worship, that it was not the "coppers," nor the bit of a "bating" Phelim had given her, that she cared about. He had harkened to bad tales about her, she said, and had sworn never to be good to her till she said "two words" to him.
His worship asked her if her husband supposed she was untrue to him.
She replied that he did, and implored the magistrate to let her swear to her fidelity!