Nogher looked her full in the face, and opened his mouth, without saying a word, literally pitched the glass of spirits to the very bottom of his throat.
“Beggin' your pardon, ma'am,” he replied, “is it three healths you'd have me dhrink wid the one glassful?—not myself, indeed; faix, I'd be long sorry to make so little of him—if he was a bit of a girsha I'd not scruple to give him a corner o' the glass, but, bein' a young man althers the case intirely—he must have a bumper for himself.”
“A girsha!” said Peggy, his fellow-servant, feeling the indignity just offered to her sex—“Why thin, bad manners to your assurance for that same: a girsha's as well intitled to a full glass as a gorsoon, any day.”
“Husth a colleen,” said Nogher, good—humoredly, “sure, it's takin' pattern by sich a fine example you ought to be. This, Mrs. Moan, is the purty crature I was mintionin' as we came along, that intends to get spanshelled wid myself some o' these days—that is, if she can bring me into good-humor, the thief.”
“And if it does happen,” said Peggy, “you'll have to look sharper afther him, Mrs. Moan. He's pleasant enough now, but I'll be bound no man 'ill know betther how to hang his fiddle behind the door when he comes home to us.”
“Well, acushla, sure he may, if he likes, but if he does, he knows what's afore him—not sayin' that he ever will, I hope, for it's a woful case whin it comes to that, ahagur.”
“Faix, it's a happy story for half the poor wives of the parish that you're in it,” said Peggy, “sure, only fore——”
“Be dhe huath Vread, agus glak sho—hould your tongue, Peggy, and taste this,” said the mother of her mistress, handing her a glass: “If you intend to go together, in the name o' goodness fear God more than the midwife, if you want to have luck an' grace.”
“Oh, is it all this?” exclaimed the sly girl; “faix, it 'ill make me hearty if I dhrink so much—bedeed it will. Well, misthress, your health, an' a speedy uprise to you—an' the same to the masther, not forgettin' the sthranger—long life an' good health to him.”
She then put the glass to her lips, and after several small sips, appearing to be so many unsuccessful attempts at overcoming her reluctance to drink it, she at length took courage, and bolting it down, immediately applied her apron to her mouth, making at the same time two or three wry faces, gasping, as if to recover the breath which it did not take from her.