“What!” returned Andy, “no sheets?”
“Divil a sheet.”
“Oh, mother, mother!” exclaimed Andy, “what would you say to your innocent child being tuk away to a place where there was no sheets?”
“Well, I never heerd the like!” says Bridget.
“Oh, the villains! to bring me where I wouldn't have a bit o' clane linen to lie in!”
“Sure, there's blankets, I tell you.”
“Oh, don't talk to me!” roared Andy; “sure, you know, sheets is only dacent.”
“Bother, girl! Isn't a snug woolly blanket a fine thing?”
“Oh, don't brake my heart that-a-way!” sobbed Andy; “sure, there's wool on any dirty sheep's back, but linen is dacency! Oh, mother, mother, if you thought your poor girl was without a sheet this night!”
And so Andy went on, spinning his bit of “linen manufacture” as long as he could, and raising Bridget's wonder that, instead of the lament which abducted ladies generally raise about their “vartue,” this young woman's principal complaint arose on the scarcity of flax. Bridget appealed to common sense if blankets were not good enough in these bad times; insisting, moreover, that, as “love was warmer than friendship, so wool was warmer than flax,” the beauty of which parallel case nevertheless failed to reconcile the disconsolate abducted. Now Andy had pushed his plea of the want of linen as far as he thought it would go, and when Bridget returned to the charge, and reiterated the oft-repeated “Come to bed, I tell you!” Andy had recourse to twiddling about his toes, and chattering his teeth, and exclaimed in a tremulous voice, “Oh, I've a thrimblin' all over me!”