Murphy uttered a very long "Oh!!!!!"
"'Deed I am, Miste' Murphy, though you may disbelieve it."
"Well—a nice walk is the best thing in the world for the health. Come along!"
"Cawn't indeed; a gentle walk on a terrace, or a shadowy avenue, is all very well—the Rotunda Gardens, for instance."
"Not forgetting the military bands that play there," said Murphy, "together with the officers of all the barracks in Dublin, clinking their sabres at their heels along the gravel walks, all for the small charge of a fi'penny bit."
Miss Riley gave a reproachful look and shrug at the vulgar mention of a "fi'penny bit," which Murphy purposely said to shock her "Brummagem gentility."
"How can you be so odd, Miste' Murphy?" she said. "I don't joke, indeed; a gentle walk—I repeat it—is all very well; but these horrid rough country walks—these masculine walks, I may say—are not consistent with a delicate frame like mine."
"A delicate frame!" said Murtough. "'Faith, I'll tell you what it is, Miss Riley," said he, standing bolt upright before her, plunging his hands into his pockets, and fixing his eyes on her feet, which still maintained their original position on the fender—"I'll tell you what it is, Miss Riley; by the vartue of my oath, if your other leg is a match for the one I see, the divil a harm a trot from this to Dublin would do you!"
Miss Riley gave a faint scream, and popped her legs under her chair, while Murphy ran off in a shout of laughter, and joined the party, to whom he made no secret of his joke.
But all this did not damp Miss Riley's hopes of winning him. She changed her plan; and seeing he did not bow to what she considered the supremacy of her very elegant manners, she set about feigning at once admiration and dread of him. She would sometimes lift her eyes to Murtough with a languishing expression, and declare she never knew any one she was so afraid of; but even this double attack on his vanity could not turn Murphy's flank, and so a very laughable flirtation went on between them, he letting her employ all the enginery of her sex against him, with a mischievous enjoyment in her blindness at not seeing she was throwing away her powder and shot.