“It’s a long time ago, if ever you were!” said Julia. “Be off wid yourself now, and see can ye meet the higgler, and get him to come and buy them ould hens of yours! Sorra bit can I give to me own good Longshanks and Speckled Humbugs but what them ould scarecrows of yours has it all ett on them!”
“There’s no price goin’ now for ould hens,” said old Mrs. Caffrey; “and besides, I’m thinking it’s what they have a mind to go lay ... and eggs dear....”
“They’ll lay none here, whether or which!” Julia said; “lay, indeed! They wouldn’t know an egg, if they saw one!”
“There’s one tidy little hayro of a hen, her with the top-knot, that I’d have a great wish for....”
“Don’t mind your wishing! they’ll all go; so now, mind what I’m telling ye!” said Julia. And so they did.
“Bitther and wicked wid her tongue she is!” old Mrs. Caffrey would say; but only to herself. She wouldn’t fret Peetcheen for the world, the poor boy!
To give Julia her due, she was, as Dark Moll said, “a most notorious rairer of fowl of every description.” She had money from the higgler laid by already. But because she was lucky herself was no reason for her to jeer at the old woman, when a while afterwards, the little ducks that were out just the day Julia came there all died, one after another.
“What else could you expect, and they June birds?” she said. “No one only a born fool would try to have them hatched then!”
Julia was right there, and in many another notion that she brought with her from the Furry Farm. But people don’t always care so very much for new ways being forced on them. Peetcheen and his mother above all were not fond of changes. Julia would have a dinner of a Sunday that, as she said, “a lord might be proud to sit down before!” a pig’s face on a bolster of greens, it might be, or something like that. But no one would have much wish for it, because there would always be so much argument and scolding over it all.
They would have had far more comfort in the old times, with nothing better than potatoes and salt, and maybe a bit of bacon or a salt herring, by way of “kitchen.” Old Mrs. Caffrey would give you a pleasant word with whatever she was sharing round and that helps out a short dinner; what mostly was what she had, God help her!