‘Every mother's sowl of us, plaze your honour, barring Blind Bess with her crippled son, and the Gineral.’
‘Then call Blind Bess and the General,’ said the captain. ‘I want you all.’
‘Sure enough, here's Bess,’ cried a voice, as a double-barrelled mendicant in the shape of a blind woman with a sturdy cripple strapped on her shoulders, came hurrying up.
‘And here's the Gineral driving like mad up the street. But sure yer honour won't give him anything—a gintleman that keeps his carriage!’ shouted a wag in the crowd.
A dilapidated old hand-cart dragged by a girl now made its appearance. It was covered at top with a piece of tattered oil-cloth, and from a hole cut in the middle of this protruded the head of ‘the Gineral,’ decorated with the remains of an old cocked-hat. The shrivelled face of the old cripple was half covered with a grizzly beard, and his rheumy eyes peered helplessly about in a feeble stare.
‘Now,’ said the captain, ‘ladies and gentlemen’—— A murmur in the crowd, especially among the feminine portion.
‘Ah thin, bless his darlin' face; 'tis he that has the civil tongue in him, and knows how to spake to the poor!’
‘Not a bit o' pride in him; no more than in the babby unborn!’
‘Sure any one to look at him would know he was good! Isn't it wrote upon his features?’
‘No nagur [niggard] like the one was here before him, that never gave a poor man as much as a dog would keep in his fist.’