"So they say; but I've cotch the complaint anyway."
"Well, tear an aigers, I never heerd the likes; it makes me mighty unhappy, for if modesty gets a footin' among us it'll be the ruin of us altogether. I shouldn't wonder but some of them retirin' cockneys has inoculated us with the affection, as they thravelled through the country. Well, an' tell us, how d'you feel whin you're blushin' Ned?"
"Arrah! now don't be laughin' at me, Mike; sure we can't help our wakeness—it's only before her that the heart of me melts away intirely."
"Never mind, avic; shure it's a good man's case anyway; an' so purty Nelly has put the comether over your sinsibilities?"
"You may say that, Mike, aroon. The niver a bit of sinse have I left, if it's a thing that I iver happened to have any; an' now, Mike, without jokin', isn't it mighty quare that I can't get the cowardly tongue to wag a word out o' my head when her eye is upon me—did you iver see Nelly's eye, Mike?"
"Scores o' times."
"May-be that isn't an eye?"
"May-be there isn't a pair of thim, since you come to that?"
"The divil such wicked-lookin' innocince iver peeped out of the head of a Christian afore, to my thinkin'."
"It's nothin' but right that you should think so, Ned."