“Ay, an' we'd give you the same,” returned Scaddhan, “if your's was gone, too; ha, ha, ha! it's not moneyless vagabones we want here.”
“No,” said Shannon, “you first make them moneyless vagabones, an' then you kick them out o' doors, as you did him.”
“Exactly,” said the hardened miscreant, “that's the way we live; when we get the skin off the cat, then we throw out the carcass.”
“Why, dang it, man,” said Whiskey, “would you expect honest Barney here, or his still honester ould rip of a father, bad as they are, to give us drink for nothing?”
“Now,” said Finnigan, who had not yet spoken, “yez are talkin' about Art Maguire, and I'll tell yez what I could do; I could bend my finger that way, an' make him folly me over the parish.”
“And how could you do that?” asked Whiskey.
“By soodherin' him—by ticklin' his empty pride—by dwellin' on the ould blood of Ireland, the great Fermanagh Maguires—or by tellin' him that he's betther than any one else, and could do what nobody else could.”
“Could you make him drunk to-night?” asked Shannon.
“Ay,” said Toal, “an' will, too, as ever you seen him in your lives; only whin I'm praisin' him do some of you oppose me, an' if I propose any thing to be done, do you all either support me in it, or go aginst me, accordin' as you see he may take it.”
“Well, then,” said Mooney, “in ordher to put you in spirits, go off, Barney, an' slip a glass o' whiskey a piece into this cordial, jist to tighten it a bit—ha, ha, ha!”