“An’ you do be very cold, I’ll engage, these nights, Brian?” continued she.
“Widdy Eelish! I’m as could as ice this minute,” answered Brian, and his teeth began to chatter as if he was up to his neck in a mill-pond.
“An’ your appetite is gone entirely, achra?” continued his tormentor.
“Sorra a word o’ lie in it,” answered the newly discovered invalid, forgetful however that he had just finished discussing a skib of potatoes and a mug of milk for his supper.
“And the cat, the crathur, looked at you this very night after licking her paw.”
“I’ll engage she did. Bad luck to her,” responded Brian, “I wouldn’t put it beyant her.”
“Let me feel your pulse, asthore,” said Peggy in conclusion; and Brian submitted his trembling wrist to her inspection, anxiously peering into her face all the while to read his doom therein. A long and deep sigh broke from her lips, along with a most voluminous puff of smoke, as she let the limb drop from her hold, and commenced rocking herself to and fro, uttering a low and peculiar species of moan, which to her terrified patient sounded as a death summons.
“Murther-an’-ages, Peggy, sure it’s not going to die I am!” exclaimed Brian.
“Och, widdy! widdy!” roared the afflicted spouse, now giving full vent to her anguish, “it’s little I thought, Brian asthore machree, when I married you in your beauty and your prime, that I’d ever live to cry the keen over you—ochone, ochone! ’tis you was the good ould man in airnest—och! och!”
“Arrah, Peggy!” interposed the object of her rather premature lamentations.