“Friends!” said the girl, bitterly; “I have no friends: I lost my mother when an infant; and the cruel desertion of my father broke the old soldier’s heart. Alas! I feel that I am left alone upon the earth, without one being who would care for me.”
“A sister, by Heaven!” cried the fosterer. “Am I not also a soldier’s orphan?”
“Why, ye thundering villain!” exclaimed Mrs. O’Leary, who had stolen softly up stairs, and caught the Jew with his ear at the key-hole, “Off wid ye, ye blackavised disciple. Bad luck attend ye, night an’ day, you ugly thief! Off, I say—” and, suiting the action to the word, she bestowed a heavy buffet upon the countenance of the Israelite that made him in no way desirous of abiding another visitation from the widow’s fist. “Well, dears!” said the jolly hostess as she bustled into the room: “may’be ye were courtin’ a bit, as young people will at times—and think of that black-muzzled ruffin lis’ning to every word ye sed! I wish he was clane out of the house, for he has the gallows in his faee.”
“I wish, indeed,” observed the girl, “that he was gone—I dread that man.”
“Arrah!” returned the burly widow, “don’t vex ye’rself about him: ye’r safe wid me—the devil a toe he’ll venture to put near my room. Ye’r tired, avourneein; and come away to ye’r-bed: and if you, Mr. O’Toole, will jist step down and take an air of the fire below, I’ll make ye a shake-down here as the house is crowded to the thatch.” Mark Antony accordingly bade his companion a good night, and descended to the kitchen, where, by a sort of common consent, the whole of the guests had united themselves for a general jollification. The whisky now seemed “uppermost,” and most of the party w’ere as it is termed in Ireland “the worse of liquor;” but the hilarity was as yet undisturbed,
“And all went merry as a marriage bell.”
The worthy sergeant who, like Bardolph, was “white-livered and red-faced,” with Pistol’s qualification of having “a killing tongue and quiet sword,” was evidently the lion of the evening; and being a romancer of the first magnitude, no man was better suited to fascinate a company who took delight in listening to deeds of arms. He was graciously pleased to reply to the inquiry of a recruit, who had expressed a strong curiosity touching the personal appearance of Napoleon le grand. Having bolted a dose of alcohol presented to him by a countryman, and deposited the pewter measure on the table, the commander thus modestly continued:—
“An’ so ye would like to know what Boney’s like? Well, the divil a man ye would meet in a day’s walk could tell you that same thing better. He has a regular gunpowder complexion, a look that would frighten a horse, and whiskers you could hang your hat upon. Father Abraham’s in the corner there—and ‘pon my conscience, honest man, ye would be the better of a barber—are but a joke to them.” And he pointed to the Jew.
“And where did you see him?” inquired a countryman.
“Where did I see him? Where—but in Agypt,” returned the commander.