“To be sure I would,” says she; “marryin’ you, and my own lawful husband alive! Arrah, Sam Singlestich, dear!—little did I think, when I made taa for ye this evenin’, that I would be bundled off by these villains!”
“And who’s Mister Singlestich?” says I.
“Who? ye thief of the world! but my lawful husband! Oh, bad luck attend ye, night and day!—ye have the gallows in ye’re face,” says she, lookin’ full at me, “and it’s one comfort, if I live to escape, I’ll hear the Judge tellin’ ye’r fortune at the Ould Baily. Troth, and I’ll go to see ye hanged, too, even if it cost me five shillins for an opposite windy.”
“Arrah,” says the postilion, turnin’ sharp round at the word ‘Ould Baily,’ and ‘being hanged,’—“what’s all this about?”
“Honest woman,” says I (for Dick seemed stupified) “who the divil are ye?—Ar’n’t ye Miss Figgins?”
“Miss?—yer mother!” says she;—“I’m the wife of a dacent tradesman, and the lawful mother of five children an’ I’ll show them again any within a mile of Huggin Lane.”
“Oh,” says the postboy, jumpin’ out of the saddle—“by the powers of pewter! we’re all dead men!” and, at one spring, he clears the fence, and cuts over hedge and ditch like a madman.
“And,” says I to myself, “maybe I’m goin’ to sit here and be hanged?”—and down I hops too. Dick Macnamara seemed to be of the same opinion, for he was on the road already. We takes the country out of the face, as if we were matched for a hundred—lavin’ the tailor’s wife and the two post-horses—the one to look after the other.
Every body that iver rode to a fox-hound, knows that it’s the pace that kills; and, for two miles, Dick and I crossed the country neck and neck, takin’ every thing in stroke as the Lord sent it. No wonder, when we came to a cross-road, that both were dead baten, and that Dick called out, for the love of God, to stop for a minute or two that we might get second wind for a fresh start. Down we sate upon the ditch; and when I got breath enough, I began to abuse Dick Macnamara like a pickpocket.
“Arrah,” says I, “what sins have I committed, that I’m to be ruinated through you? If iver the divil had a fast hould of a sinner, it’s yourself, Dick! Was there iver a man so asily put in the ready way to make a fortune? Wasn’t the lady med out—the rough work done—and sorra thing for you to do, but sit like a gintleman quietly in the chaise, pay year lady some tender attention, and keep her mouth stuffed with a pocket-handkerchif. And how beautiful ye put your fut in it! Oh, Holy Joseph!—to run away with a tradesman’s-wife, and the mother of five childer into the bargain!”