Having seen her hopeful charge safely deposited on the hob, Nancy would throw her cloak into this corner, and her bonnet into that, with the air of a woman absorbed by the consideration of some vexatious trial; she would then sit down, and, lighting her doodeen, (* a short pipe) exclaim—
“Wurrah, wurrah! but it's me that's the heart-scalded crathur with that man's four quarters! The Lord may help me and grant me patience with him, any way!—to have my little honest, hard-earned penny spint among a pack of vagabonds, that don't care if him and me wor both down the river, so they could get their skinful of drink out of him! No matther, agra, things can't long be this a-way; but what does Ned care?—give him drink and fighting, and his blackguards about him, and that's his glory. There now's the landlord coming down upon us for the rint; and unless he takes the cows out of the byre, or the bed from anundher us, what in the wide earth is there for him?”
The current of this lecture was never interrupted by a single observation from Ned, who usually employed himself in silently playing with “Bunty;” a little black cur, without a tail, and a great favorite with Nancy; or, if he noticed anything out of its place in the house, he would arrange it with great apparent care. In the meantime, Nancy's wrath generally evaporated with the smoke of the pipe—a circumstance which Ned well knew; for after she had sucked it until it emitted a shrill, bubbling sound, like that from a reed, her brows, which wore at other times an habitual frown, would gradually relax into a more benevolent expression—the parenthetical curves on each side of her mouth, formed by the irascible pursing of her lips, would become less marked—the dog or cat, or whatever else came in her way, instead of being kicked aside, or pursued in an underfit of digressional peevishness, would be put out of her path with gentler force—so that it was, in such circumstances, a matter of little difficulty to perceive that conciliation would soon be the order of the day. Ned's conduct on these critical occasions was very prudent and commendable: he still gave Nancy her own way; never “jawed back to her;” but took shelter, as it were, under his own patience, until the storm had passed, and the sun of her good humor began to shine out again. Nancy herself, now softened by the fumes of her own pigtail, usually made the first overtures to a compromise, but, without departing from the practice and principles of higher negotiators; always in an indirect manner: as, “Biddy, avourneen,” speaking to her niece, “maybe that crathur,” pointing! to Ned, “ate nothing to-day; you had better, agra! get him the could bacon that's in the cupboard, and warm for him, upon the greeshaugh, (* hot embers) them yallow-legs (* a kind of potato) that's in the colindher; though God he knows it's ill my common (* It's ill-becoming—or it ill becomes me, to everlook his conduct)—but no matther, ahagur! There's enough said, I'm thinking—give them to him.”
On Ned seating himself to his bacon and potatoes, Nancy would light another pipe, and plant herself on the opposite hob, putting some interrogatory to him, in the way of business—always concerning a third person, and still in a tone of dry ironical indifference: as—
“Did you see Jimmy Connolly on your travels?”
“No.”
“Humph! Can you tell us if Andy Morrow sould his coult?”
“He did.”
“May be you have gumption enough to know what he got for him?”
“Fifteen guineas.”