"And is that Hoppy Houligan?" said old Coogan, "I often heerd of him, to be sure, but I never seen him before."
"Oh, then, you may see him before and behind now," said Larry; "and, indeed, if he had a match for that odd skirt of his coat, he wouldn't be the worse iv it; and in throth the cordheroys themselves aren't a bit too good, and there's the laste taste in life of his—"
"Whisht," said the old man, "he is looking back, and maybe he hears you."
"Not he in throth. Sure he's partly bothered."
"How can he play the fiddle then, and be bothered?" said Coogan.
"Faix an' that's the very raison he is bothered; sure he moidhers the ears off of him intirely with the noise of his own fiddle. Oh he's a powerful fiddler."
"So I often heerd, indeed," said the old man.
"He bangs all the fiddlers in the counthry."
"And is in the greatest request," added Noonan.
"Yet he looks tatthered enough," said old Coogan.