"I depend an you, Mr. O'Hara, for seeing us safe out of their hands," said one of them, for the other was dumb from terror.
"So you may," was the answer O'Hara returned. "Hurt nor harm shall not be put an you; I give you my word o' that."
"Divil a harm," said Larry. "We'll only put you into a shoot o' clothes that is ready for you, and you may look as melancholy as you plaze, for it is murners you are to be. Well, Honor," said he, addressing O'Hara's daughter, "have you got the mithres and vestments ready, as I towld you?"
"Yes," said Honor; "here comes Biddy Mulligan with them from the house, for Biddy herself helped me to make them."
"And who had a betther right?" said Larry, "when it was herself that laid it all out complate, the whole thing from the beginnin', and sure enough but it was a bright thought of her. Faix, he'll be the looky man that gets Biddy, yet."
"You had betther have her yourself, I think," said Honor, with an arch look at Larry, full of meaning.
"An' it's that same I've been thinking of for some time," said Larry, laughing, and returning Honor's look with one that repaid it with interest "But where is she at all? Oh, here she comes with the duds, and Mike Noonan afther her; throth, he's following her about all this mornin' like a sucking calf. I'm afeard Mikee is going to sarcumvint me wid Biddy; but he'd betther mind what he's at."
Here the conversation was interrupted by the advance of Biddy Mulligan, "and Mikee Noonan afther her," bearing some grotesque imitation of clerical vestments made of coarse sacking, and two enormous head-dresses made of straw, in the fashion of mitres; these were decorated with black rags hung fantastically about them, while the vestments were smeared over with black stripes in no very regular order.
"Come here," said Larry to the tithe proctors; "come here, antil we put you into your regimentals."
"What are you goin' to do with us, Mr. Lanigan?" said the frightened poor wretch, while his knees knocked together with terror.