“Faith an' the more will be her loss. I tell you, Jemmy, that he'd outdo either you or me as a meal man. What more would you want?”
“He's cute enough, I know that.”
“I tell you you don't know the half of it. It's the man that can make the money for her that you want.”
“But aginst that, you know, it's Peggy an' not me that's to marry him. Now, you know that women often—though not always, I grant—wish to have something in the appearance of their husband that they needn't be ashamed to look at.”
“That's the only objection that can bo brought against him. He's the boy can make the money; I'm a fool to him. I'll tell you what, Jemmy Murray, may I never go home, but he'd skin a flint. Did you hear anything? Now!”
Murray, who appeared to be getting somewhat tired of this topic, replied rather hastily—
“Why, Cooney Finnigan, if he could skin the devil himself and ait him afterwards, she wouldn't have him. She has refused some of the best looking young men in the parish, widout either rhyme or raison, an' I'm sure she's not goin' to take your leprechaun of a son, that you might run a five-gallon keg between his knees. Sure, bad luck to the thing his legs resemble but a pair of raipin' hooks, wid their backs outwards. Let us pass this subject, and come in till we drink a glass together.”
“And so you call my son a leprechaun, and he has legs like raipin' hooks!”
“Ha, ha, ha! Come in, man alive; never mind little Toal.”
“Like raipin' hooks! I'll tell you what, Jemmy, I say now in sincerity, that there is every prospect of a plentiful sayson; and that there may, I pray God this day; meadows an' all—O above all, the meadows, for I'm not in the hay business myself.”