“Are you the new boy?” Richard said he was. “Well,” added the woman, looking him over carefully, “when master had a mind to get a new boy, he might have got something with flesh on its bones, and stout arms. Sorra a much joy I’ll have wid a shrimpeen of a child like you in the house. Sorra a helping hand at the knives, or shoes, or messages, I’ll go bail!”
“Indeed I can do every thing you want, and bring you all you wish,” said Richard, cheerfully.
“Bring me all I wish!” repeated the Irish servant, in a low, desponding tone. “Oh, then, hear to the presumption of youth! May be, you think I’m like yer mother, and that all my wishes end in a half-pint of beer, or a glass of gin?”
Richard felt his susceptible blood rush over his face. “My mother,” he said, “never took a glass of gin in her life!”
She looked fixedly at him, and gradually her huge mouth expanded into a smile. “Yer a better boy than I thought ye, though you can’t bring me all I wish; you can’t bring me my two fine boys back from the withered church-yard; you can’t bring me back my strength, my heart, my youth, my gay, bright youth! All I wish! Och, wirrasthue! if I had all I wish, it’s not in slavery I’d be in an airee all day, with a poor lone man for a master, that thinks the world and its sunshine is made out of musty books—and newspapers—that I can’t get the reading of. Can you read?”
“Yes.”
“Well, if you’ll read me a bit of the news—the reale newspaper, political news—not your po-leece thrash, but the States of Europe—I’ll stand yer friend.”
Richard followed her down stairs, wondering what interest such a deplorable looking woman could possibly take in the “States of Europe.” She told him what to do, concerning knives and shoes and coat-brushing, and left him to do it; but the “all” was so very little, that, in addition to her directions, he made up the fire and swept the hearth; and his habits of order and quickness gave the small, dismal kitchen an air of neatness approaching to comfort, which perhaps it had never before exhibited during the dynasty of “Matty Hayes.” It was this good woman’s habit always to speak in a tone of injured innocence. She anticipated that every thing must go wrong, and she met the evil half-way, with a sort of grim exultation. She delighted in contradiction; and would contradict herself, rather than not contradict at all. There was, however, as is usual with her “people,” an under-current of good-nature coursing round her heart, which rendered her speech and action two different and opposite things.
“Master’s shoes nor coat aint ready, of course?” she called from the landing. In a moment Richard’s light feet flew up the stairs, and he laid them on her bony arms.
“Then I’m sure he’s let the fire out, if these are done,” she muttered to herself. “There never was a boy that did not undo ten things while he did one!”