"'Tis about the same as your own, Mick; an' I think you med as good a fist of yours."
"Well, maybe so, indeed; but I doubt it is going into worse hands than what yours will, Ned."
"Why that, Mick?"
"Ah, that Tom of mine is a wild extravagant hero. He doesn't know much about the value of money, and never paid any attention to farming business, only what he was obliged to pick up from being with me. He thinks he'll be rich enough when I'm in my clay, without much work. An' so he will, Ned, so far as that goes; but it's only of book-larnin' an' horse-racin' an' coorsin' he's thinkin', by way of being a sort of gentleman one of those days; but he'll find to his cost, in the lather end, that there's more wantin' to grow good crops than 'The Farmer's Calendar of Operations.'"
"He's young, Mick, an' no doubt he'll mend. I hope you don't discourage him."
"Not at all, Ned. The book-larnin 's all well enough, as far as it goes, if he'd put the practice along with it, an' be studdy."
"So he will, Mick. His wild-oats will soon be all sown, an' then you'll see what a chap he'll be."
"Faix, I'd rather see him sowing a crop of yallow Aberdeens, Ned, next June; an' maybe it's what it's at the Curragh of Kildare he'll be, as I can hear. My advice to him is to get married to some dacent nice girl, that id take the wildness out of him, and lay himself down to business. You know, Ned, he'll have every penny and stick I have in the world; and the lease of my houlding in Rathcashmore is as good as an estate at the rent I pay. If he'd give up his meandherin', and take a dacent liking to them that's fit for him, I'd set him up all at wanst, an' not be keeping him out of it until I was dead an' berrid."
The above was not a bad feeler, nor was it badly put by old Mick Murdock to his neighbor. "Them that's fit for him" could hardly be mistaken; yet there was a certain degree of disparagement of his own son calculated to conceal his object. It elicited nothing, however, but a long thoughtful silence upon old Ned Cavana's part, which Mick was not slow to interpret, and did not wish to interrupt. At last Ned stood up from the gate, and smoothing down the sleeves of his coat, as if he supposed they had contracted some dust, he observed, "I'm afear'd, Mick, you're puttin' the cart before the horse; come until I show you a few ridges of red apples I'm diggin' out to-day. You'd think I actially got them carted in, an' threune them upon the ridges: the like of them I never seen."
And the two old men walked down the lane together.