"What is it? don't keep me waitin' all day."
"I hope yer honor will take into considheration the way he's in just now, for he sthole out onbeknown to me, an' how he got the sup, I can't tell; but it's on him dhreadful, or he'd never think of the likes."
"The likes of what? what's throublin' him now? speak out, woman, or you'll drive the little bit of patience that I have clean out of me."
"Then, sir, the long an' the short of it is, an' I dunno what put such foolishness in his head, he towld me to ax yer honor, if yer honor had a thrifle of that soup left; he'd take it as a mighty great favor if yer honor would let him have the least taste in life of it," said Peggy, with an extreme misgiving as to how so presumptuous a request would be received.
"Is that all?" said Dan, calmly, to her intense relief. "Take it, an' welcome, Mrs. Duff, an' if it does him as much good as it did me you won't be throubled wid such a message again, I'll be bound; there's the vagabone stuff in that big bowl over on the sideboard fornenst you; an' tell him, by the same token, from me, that av he feels at all uncomfortable in his present quarthers, it wouldn't kill me right out to swap again."
"Swap what, sir?" inquired Peggy, rather mystified.
"Oh! he'll know what I mean."
"And so do I," screamed the irate Mrs. Bulworthy rushing into the room, at the door of which, she had been listening during the entire conversation, the spirit of which had inflamed her jealous temperament up to fever heat.
"I know what you want to swap, you ill-conditioned profligate," she went on, in true Zantippe style. "You want to swap wives, don't you?"
"Faix, an' you never said a thruer word," coolly replied Dan.