He had scarcely taken his seat before the toilet, when a soft tap at the door, and the sound of a small squeaking voice, announced the arrival of the hair-cutter. On looking round him, Hardress beheld a small, thin-faced, red-haired little man, with a tailor’s shears dangling from his finger, bowing and smiling with a timid and conciliating air. In an evil hour for his patience, Hardress consented that he should commence operations.
“The piatez were very airly this year, sir,” he modestly began, after he had wrapped a check apron about the neck of Hardress, and made the other necessary arrangements.
“Very early, indeed. You needn’t cut so fast.”
“Very airly, sir—the white-eyes especially. Them white-eyes are fine piatez. For the first four months I wouldn’t ax a better piatie than a white-eye, with a bit o’ bacon, if one had it; but after that the meal goes out of ’em, and they gets wet and bad. The cups arn’t so good in the beginnin’ o’ the saison, but they hould better. Turn your head more to the light, sir, if you plase. The cups, indeed, are a fine substantial, lasting piatie. There’s great nutriment in’em for poor people, that would have nothin’ else with them but themselves, or a grain o’ salt. There’s no piatie that eats better, when you have nothin’ but a bit o’ the little one (as they say) to eat with a bit o’ the big. No piatie that eats so sweet with point.”
“With point?” Hardress repeated, a little amused by this fluent discussion of the poor hair-cutter upon the varieties of a dish which, from his childhood, had formed almost his only article of nutriment, and on which he expatiated with as much cognoscence and satisfaction as a fashionable gourmand might do on the culinary productions of Eustache Ude. “What is point?”
“ON LOOKING ROUND HIM, HARDRESS BEHELD A SMALL, THIN-FACED, RED-HAIRED LITTLE MAN.”
“Don’t you know what that is, sir? I’ll tell you in a minute. A joke that them that has nothin’ to do, an’ plenty to eat, make upon the poor people that has nothin’ to eat, and plenty to do. That is, when there’s dry piatez on the table, and enough of hungry people about it, and the family would have, maybe, only one bit o’ bacon hanging up above their heads, they’d peel a piatie first, and then they’d point it up at the bacon, and they’d fancy that it would have the taste o’ the mait when they’d be aitin’ it after. That’s what they call point, sir. A cheap sort o’ diet it is (Lord help us!) that’s plenty enough among the poor people in this country. A great plan for making a small bit o’ pork go a long way in a large family.”
“Indeed it is but a slender sort of food. Those scissors you have are dreadful ones.”
“Terrible, sir. I sent my own over to the forge before I left home, to have an eye put in it; only for that, I’d be smarter a deal. Slender food it is, indeed. There’s a deal o’ poor people here in Ireland, sir, that are run so hard at times, that the wind of a bit o’ mait is as good to ’em as the mait itself to them that would be used to it. The piatez are everythin’; the kitchen[14] little or nothin’. But there’s a sort o’ piatez (I don’t know did your honour ever taste ’em) that’s gettin’ greatly in vogue now among ’em, an’ is killin’ half the country,—the white piatez, a piatie that has great produce, an’ requires but little manure, and will grow in very poor land; but has no more strength nor nourishment in it than if you had boiled a handful o’ sawdust and made gruel of it, or put a bit of a deal board between your teeth and thought to make a breakfast of it. The black bulls themselves are better; indeed, the black bulls are a deal a better piatie than they’re thought. When you’d peel ’em, they look as black as indigo, an’ you’d have no mind to ’em at all; but I declare they’re very sweet in the mouth, an’ very strengthenin’. The English reds are a nate piatie, too; and the apple piatie (I don’t know what made ’em be given up), an’ the kidney (though delicate o’ rearing); but give me the cups for all, that will hould the meal in ’em to the last, and won’t require any inthricket tillage. Let a man have a middling-sized pit o’ cups again the winter, a small caish[15] to pay his rent, an’ a handful o’ turf behind the doore, an’ he can defy the world.”