“Faix, bravely, thank you, Rose. How is yourself?”
“Indeed, thin, sorra bit o’ the health we can complain of, Bhried, barrin’ whin this pain in the back comes upon us. The last time I seen your mother, Biddy, she was complainin’ of a weid.[6] I hope she’s betther, poor woman?”
“Hut! bad scran to the thing ails her! She has as light a foot as e’er a one of us, an’ can dance ‘Jackson’s mornin’ brush’ as well as ever she could.”
“Throth, an’ I’m proud to hear it. Och! och! ‘Jackson’s mornin’ brush!’ and it was she that could do it. Sure I remimber her wedding-day like yestherday. Ay, far an’ near her fame wint as a dancer, an’ the clanest-made girl that ever came from Lisbuie. Like yestherday do I remimber it, an’ how the squire himself an’ the ladies from the Big House came down to see herself an’ your father, the bride and groom—an’ it wasn’t on every hill head you’d get sich a couple—dancin’ the same ‘Jackson’s mornin’ brush.’ Oh! it was far and near her fame wint for dancin’ that.—An’ is there no news wid you, Bhried, at all at all?”
“The sorra word, Rose: where ud I get news? Sure it’s yourself that’s always on the fut that ought to have the news for us, Rose alive.”
“An’ maybe I have too. I was spaikin’ to a friend o’ mine about you the other day.”
“A friend o’ yours, Rose! Why, what friend could it be?”
“A friend o’ mine—ay, an’ of yours too. Maybe you have more friends than you think, Biddy—and kind ones too, as far as wishin’ you well goes, ’tany rate. Ay have you, faix, an’ friends that e’er a girl in the parish might be proud to hear named in the one day wid her. Awouh!”
“Bedad we’re in luck, thin, for that’s more than I knew of. An’ who may these great friends of ours be, Rose?”
“Awouh! Faix, as dacent a boy as ever broke bread the same boy is, ‘and,’ says he, ‘if I had goold in bushelfuls, I’d think it too little for that girl;’ but, poor lad, he’s not aisy or happy in his mind in regard o’ that. ‘I’m afeard,’ says he, ‘that she’d put scorn upon me, an’ not think me her aiquals. An’ no more I am,’ says he again, ‘for where, afther all, would you get the likes of Biddy Sullivan?’—Poor boy! throth my heart aches for him!”