"Well, the mischief has got into you, I b'lieve. Corney, you niver tuk such a fit as this, afore."
"Niver mind, Moll, I know what I know; luck's like a fox; you have to hunt it hard before you ketch it; the divil a toe will it come to you. There's plinty of fairies about, an' who knows but there may be as lucky chaps as Phil Blake in the worrild."
At the conclusion of the above conversation, Corney silently resumed his work, endeavoring to add another piece to a wonderfully patched brogue, while Mary busied herself at the little bright turf-fire, boiling the water for tea—a few scanty grains of some apochryphal herb, representing that indispensable delicacy. She holds a rasher of exceedingly fat bacon on the end of a fork, which screws and twists itself about like some living thing enduring fierce agony, while a sleepy-looking puss, with her tail twisted comfortably around her paws like a muff, sits intently watching the operation, evidently wondering in her own mind what it can possibly be that spits so cat-like and so spitefully into the fire. The walls of the little room are comfortably whitewashed; only one broken pane of glass in the window, and that neatly mended with a piece of old newspaper; the dresser is as white as soap and sand applied by tidy hands can make it, while the few household utensils that adorn it, shine to the utmost extent of their capability. It's hardly necessary to say, that a good, cleanly, homely and sensible wife, was Mary O'Carrol; and our friend Corney was an ungrateful rascal to be dissatisfied with his condition. The mistake he made was this (and it is by no means confined to Corney), he contrasted his situation in life with the few who were better off than himself, instead of the many who were infinitely worse.
And now, dear, domestic, tidy Mary spreads her little cloth, coarse 'tis true, but scrupulously clean and ironed, every fold showing like a printed line; she opens a little cupboard and produces an enormous home-baked loaf, so close and dense that a dyspeptic individual would feel an oppression by merely looking at it, but which our toil-hungered friends can dispose of by the pound, without the assistance of tonics; then, the small, black teapot, having stood the conventional time, is carefully wiped, and placed on the table, and the whole frugal but comfortable meal arrayed with that appetizing neatness without which it becomes a mere matter of feeding and not of enjoyment.
"Now, Corney, dear," said Mary, "tay's ready."
"Faix, an' there's a pair of us," replied Corney, "I'm just about as hungry as a dragin."
And no gourmet, even after he had lashed his appetite with stimulants, which would otherwise have sneaked away from the laborious work it had to undergo, ever sat down with so keen a palate, or rose from table with so capital a sense of satisfaction as did Corney on this particular occasion.
"Well, Molly machree," he cried, "I don't know that I iver had a greater thrate nor that same rasher; if the fat of it wasn't, for all the worrild, like double-distilled marra, may I niver use another tooth; an' that tay! Gogs bleakey, Moll, if you haven't a recait for squeezin' the parliaminthary flaviour out of the herrib! regard the color of it!"
"An' afther three wathers," replied Mary, with pardonable vanity.
"Thrue for you, darlin'; why, the bread seems lighter, an' the butther sweeter, an' the crame thicker. I'll be judged by the cat—look at the baste; if she hasn't been thryin' to lick the last dhrop off of her hushkers, for as good as a quarther of an hour, an' it's stickin' there still, as tight as a carbuncle to a Christian's nose; an' may-be I ain't goin' to enjoy this," he continued, as drawing his chair close to the fire, out came his use-blackened pipe. He took just as much time in preparation, cutting his tobacco and rolling it about in his hand, as Mary did to clear away the tea-things, in order that nothing should interfere with that great source of comfort—his smoke. Having placed a small piece of lighted turf on top of his pipe he threw himself back in his chair. With eyes half closed, and an expression of the most profound gratification creeping over his features, he sent forth several voluminous whiffs—what he called "saysonin' his mouth;" but very soon, as though the sensation was too delicious to be hurried over, he subsided into a slow, dignified, and lazy smoke, saying, between puffs: