The party addressed looked with some alarm in all directions for any visible intimation of the speaker's presence, but in vain. At length, from among an unusually thick and luxuriant tuft of docks and other weeds, which grew at the edge of a ditch close by, she beheld something red emerging, which in a few moments she clearly perceived to be the classical countenance of Larry Toole.
"The Lord purtect us all, Mr. Toole. Why in the world do you frighten people this way?" ejaculated the nymph, rather shrilly.
"Whist! most evangelical iv women," exclaimed Larry in a low key, and looking round suspiciously—"whisht! or we are ruined."
"La! Mr. Laurence, what are you after?" rejoined the damsel, with a good deal of asperity. "I'll have you to know I'm not used to talk with a man that's squat in a ditch, and his head in a dock plant. That's not the way for to come up to an honest woman, sir—no more it is."
"I'd live ten years in a ditch, and die in a dock plant," replied Larry with enthusiasm, "for one sight iv you."
"And is that what brought you here?" replied she, with a toss of her head. "I purtest some people's quite overbearing, so they are, and knows no bounds."
"Stop a minute, most beautiful bayin'—for one instant minute pay attintion," exclaimed Mr. Toole, eagerly, for he perceived that she had commenced her retreat. "Tare an' owns! divine crature, it's not goin' you are?"
"I have no notions, good or bad, Mr. Toole," replied the young lady, with great volubility and dignity, "and no idaya in the wide world for to be standing here prating, and talking, and losing my time with such as you—if my business is neglected, it is not on your back the blame will light. I have my work, and my duty, and my business to mind, and if I do not mind them, no one else will do it for me; and I am astonished and surprised beyant telling, so I am, at the impittence of some people, thinking that the likes of me has nothing else to be doing but listening to them discoorsing in a dirty ditch, and more particular when their conduct has been sich as some people's that is old enough at any rate to know better."
The fair handmaiden had now resumed her retreat; so that Larry, having raised himself from his lowly hiding-place, was obliged to follow for some twenty yards before he again came up with her.
"Wait one half second—stop a bit, for the Lord's sake," exclaimed he, with most earnest energy.