But the more I gin the more they follered on. So I jest shet up my portmoney and put it into my pocket.
Josiah poohed at ’em and didn’t give a cent, and didn’t approve of the three cents I’d expended.
Till one old woman whispered to him, and I hearn her say—
“I see, young man, that you are good to your old mother; won’t you for her sake give me a shilling?”
He wavered—he almost gin it to her. Sez she—“I will pray for blessin’s on your handsome young head.”
He handed her the shillin’ with a happy, foolish look, which lasted till she come round to my side, and she whispered to me—
“My pretty young lady, give me a sixpence. Your poor old father has give me a gift, and do not let your own young heart be harder nor his.”
His liniment darkened rapidly, and he hurried me through the narrer streets, full of shops and tarverns; and he did not console himself as I did by lookin’ up on the steep hill and seein’ the handsome residences—no, he seemed cut to the heart.
Wall, Martin said when we got back that we would go up to Cork at once, as he wuz anxious to see all he could in Ireland as rapidly as possible.
He said that in a week at the outside he thought we could exhaust all the sight-seein’ in Ireland and git to the bottom of the “Irish Question.”