The result of Pete's first week's fishing was twenty cod and a gigantic ling. He packed the cod in boxes and sent them by Crow and the steam-packet to the market in Liverpool. The ling he swung on his back over his oilskin jacket and carried it home, the head at his shoulder and the tail dangling at his legs.
“There!” he cried, dropping it on the floor, “split it and salt it, and you've breakfas'es for a month.”
When the remittance came from Liverpool it was a postal order for seven-and-sixpence.
“Never mind,” said Pete; “we're bating Dan Hommy anyway—the ould muff has only made seven-and-a-penny.”
The weather was rough, the fishing was bad, the tackle got broken, and Pete began to extol plain living.
“Gough bless me,” he said, “I don't know in the world what's coming to the ould island at all. When I was for a man-servant with Cæsar the farming boys were ateing potatoes and herrings three times a day. But now! butcher's mate every dinner-time, if you plaze. And tay! the girls must be having it reg'lar—and taking no shame with them neither. My sake, I remember when the mother would be whispering, 'Keep an eye on the road, boy, while I'm brewing myself a cup of tay.' Truth enough, Nancy. An ounce a week and a pound of sugar, and people wondering at the woman for that.”
The mountains were taken from the people, and they were no longer allowed “to cut turf for fuel; coals were dear, the winter was cold, and Pete began to complain of a loss of appetite.
“My teeth must be getting bad, Nancy,” he whined. They were white as milk and faultless as a negro's. “Don't domesticate my food somehow. What's the odds, though I Can't ate suppers at all, and that's some constilation. Nothing like going to bed hungry, Nancy, if you're wanting to get up with an appetite for breakfast. Then the beautiful drames, woman! Gough bless me, the dinners and the feasts and the bankets you're ateing in your sleep! Now, if you filled your skin like a High Bailiff afore going to bed, ten to one you'd have a buggane riding on your breast the night through and drame of dying for a drink of water. Aw, sleep's a reg'lar Radical Good for levelling up, anyway.”
Christmas approached, servants boasted of the Christmas boxes they got from their masters, and Pete remembered Nancy.
“Nancy,” said he, “they're telling me Liza Billy-ny-Clae is getting twenty pound per year per annum at her new situation in Douglas. She isn't nothing to yourself at cooking. Mustn't let the lil one stand in your way, woman. She's getting a big girl now, and I'll be taking her out in the Dandie with me and tying her down on the low deck there and giving her a pig's bladder, and she'll be playing away as nice as nice. See?”