"You know, you must know, for it's fairly breakin' my heart I am here; I want to get back to myself, and Peggy, an' the boy."
"Ah! you have begun to think of them at last."
"I own I have been selfish, sinfully, wretchedly selfish, but I'm cured," replied Dan, in a tone of contrition.
"But you remember the conditions of the compact," said the other, "neither of you can regain your original form and station unless both consent."
"Oh! wirrasthrue, then I'll never be my own man again," sobbed Dan. "Ould Bulworthy, bad 'cess to him, has the best of the bargain, an' he'll stick to it like wax; small blame to him for it, seein' that I sould my comfort entirely for a pair of murdherin' top-boots; he ain't such an omathaun as to come back here to his gout an' his scowldin' madame, when its a thrifle of hunger is all he'll have to put up wid, over the way, an' there's happiness enough in one glance of Peggy's bright eye, to swally that up if it was ten times as throublesome; and there's the boy, too, that's like a growin' angel about the house, fillin' up every spot of it wid heavenly joy; oh! wirra, wirra! sure, I didn't know the luck I was in until I lost it out an' out."
"The perversity of mankind is strange," said the spirit. "Are you certain that Bulworthy is content in his present condition?"
"How the divil can he be otherwise?" replied the other, savagely.
"You were not, you remember."
"Because I didn't know there was a worse: like an ignorant fool, I thought that a scanty meal now and then was the greatest calamity in the world; be me sowl, I've had the knowledge rubbed into my bones, that too much is sometimes apt to sting a fellow afterwards more than too little."
"Perhaps the sensation of hunger may be to him as disagreeable as the sense of satiety is to you," suggested the spirit.