“Divil a so well dressed a bit o' ham ever I ett—it melts into one's mouth like a kiss from a purty woman. Troth, Nancy, I think I'm kissing you ever since I began to ait it.”
“Get out,” said Nancy, laughing; “troth, you're a quare one; but you know our Wickla' hams is famous.”
“And so is your Wicklow girls,” replied Dandy; “but for my part, I'd sooner taste their lips than the best hams that ever were ett any day.”
“Well, but,” said Nancy, “did you ever taste our bacon? bekaise, if you didn't, lave off what you're at, and in three skips I'll get you a rasher and eggs that'll make you look nine ways at once. Here, throw that by, it's could, and I'll get you something hot and comfortable.”
“Go on,” replied Dandy; “I hate idleness. Get the eggs and rasher you spake of, and while you're doin' it I'll thry and amuse myself wid what's before me. Industhry's the first of virtues, Nancy, and next to that comes perseverance; I defy you in the mane time to do a rasher as well as you did this ham—hoeh—och—och. God bless me, a bit was near stickin' in my throat. Is your wather good here? and the raison why I ax you is, that I'm the devil to plaise in wather; and on that account I seldom take it without a sup o' spirits to dilute it, as the docthors say, for, indeed, that's the way it agrees with me best. It's a kind of family failin' with us—devil a one o' my blood ever could look a glass of mere wather in the face without blushin'.”
Dandy was now upon what they call the simplicity dodge; that is to say, he affected that character of wisdom for which certain individuals, whose knowledge of life no earthly experience ever can improve, are so extremely anxious to get credit. Every word he uttered was accompanied by an oafish grin, so ludicrously balanced between simplicity and cunning, that Nancy, who had been half her life on the lookout for such a man, and who knew that this indecision of expression was the characteristic of the tribe with which she classed him, now saw before her the great dream of her heart realized.
“Well, in troth,” she replied, “you are a quare man; but still it would be too bad to make you blush for no stronger raison than mere wather. So, in the name o' goodness, here's a tumbler of grog,” she added, filling him out one on the instant, “and as you're so modest, you must only drink it and keep your countenance; it'll prepare you, besides, for the rasher and eggs; and, by the same token, here's an ould candle-box that's here the Lord knows how long; but, faix, now it must help to do the rasher. Come then; if you are stronger than I am, show your strength, and pull it to pieces, for you see I can't.”
It was one of those flat little candle-boxes made of deal, with which every one in the habit of burning moulds is acquainted. Dandy took it up, and whilst about to pull it to pieces, observed written on a paper label, in a large hand, something between writing and print, “Mrs. Norton, Summerfield Cottage, Wicklow.”
“What is this?” said he; “what name is this upon it? Let us see, 'Mrs. Norton, Summerfield Cottage, Wicklow!' Who the dickens is Mrs. Norton?”
“Why, my present mistress,” replied Nancy; “Mr. Mainwaring is her second husband, and her name was Mrs. Norton before she married him.”