"And what was it brought you here?" said Oonah, facing round on Andy, with a dangerous look, rather, in her bright eye. "Will you tell us that—what was it?"
"I came to save my life, I tell you," said Andy.
"To put us in dhread of ours, you mane," said Oonah. "Just look at the omadhaun there," said she to her aunt, "standin' with his mouth open, just as if nothin' happened, and he after frightening the lives out of us."
"Thrue for you, alanna," said her aunt.
"And would no place sarve you, indeed, but undher our bed, you vagabone?" said his mother, roused to a sense of his delinquency; "to come in like a merodin' villain as you are, and hide under the bed, and frighten the lives out of us, and rack and ruin my place!"
"'T was Misther Dick, I tell you," said Andy.
"Bad scran to you, you unlucky hangin' bone thief!" cried the widow, seizing him by the hair, and giving him a hearty cuff on the ear, which would have knocked him down, only that Oonah kept him up by an equally well-applied box on the other.
"Would you murdher me?" shouted Andy, as he saw his mother lay hold of the broom.
"Aren't you afther frightenin' the lives out of us, you dirty, good-for-nothing, mischief-making——"
On poured the torrent of abuse, rendered more impressive by a whack at every word. Andy roared, and the more he roared, the more did Oonah and his mother thrash him.