“Well,” says Tom, “you have saved me some trouble, Mr. Morrow, for you just said, to a hair, what they were. But I mustn't forget to mintion one thing that I saw the morning of the berril. We were,—about a dozen neighbors of us, talking in the street, just before the door; both the hagyards were forninst us—Tom's snug and nate—but Charley Lawdher had to go over from where we stood to drive the pig out of poor Larry's. There was one of the stacks with the side out of it, just as he had drawn away the sheaves from time to time; for the stack leaned to one side, and he pulled sheaves out of the other side to keep it straight. Now, Mr. Morrow, wasn't he an unfortunate man? for whoever would go down to Squire Dickson's hagyard, would see the same Larry's handiwork so beautiful and illegant, though his own was in such brutheen.* Even his barn to wrack; and he was obliged to thrash his oats in the open air when ther would be a frost, and he used to lose one-third of it; and if there came a thaw, 'twould almost brake the crathur.”
* Brutheen is potatoes champed with butter. Anything in a
loose, broken, and irregular state, is said to be in
brutheen—that is in disorder and contusion.
“God knows,” said Nancy, looking over at Ned very significantly, “and Larry's not alone in neglecting his business; that is, if certain people were allowed to take their own way; but the truth of it is, that he met with a bad woman. If he had a careful, sober, industrious wife of his own, that would take care of the house and place—(Biddy, will you hand me over that other dew out of the windy-stool there till I finish this stocking for Ned)—the story would have another ending any how.”
“In throth,” said Tom, “that's no more than thruth, Nancy; but he had not, and everything went to the bad with them entirely.”
“It's a thousand pities he hadn't yourself, Nancy,” said Alick, grinning; “if he had, I haven't the laste doubt at all, but he'd die worth money.”
“Go on, Alick—go on, Avick; I will give you lave to have your joke, any way; for it's you that's the patthern to any man that would wish to thrive in the world.”
“If Ned dies, Nancy, I don't know a woman I'd prefer; I'm now a widdy' these five years; and I feel, somehow, particularly since I began to spend my evenings here, that I'm disremembering very much the old proverb—a burnt child, dreads the fire.'”
* The peasantry of a great portion of Ireland use this word
as applicable to both sexes.
“Thank you, Alick; you think I swallow that; but as for Ned, the never a fear of him; except that an increasing stomach is a sign of something; or what's the best chance of all, Alick, for you and me, that he should meet Larry's fate in some of his drunken fits.”
“Now, Nancy,” says Ned, “there's no use in talking that way; it's only last Thursday, Mr. Morrow, that, in presence of her own brother, Jemmy Connolly, the breeches-maker, and Billy M'Kinny, there, that I put my two five fingers acrass, and swore solemnly by them five crosses, that, except my mind changed, I'd never drink more nor one-half pint of spirits and three pints of porther in a day.”