Lilly shook her head, and her eyes filled with tears, at the manly and modest generosity of the pedlar.
“Little you know then, Mr. Magrath, the load you have taken off my dear mistress's heart, and the delight you have brought upon the whole family.”
“Well, Lilly dear, sure if I did, amn't I well paid, for it? thanks to your two sweet lips for that. Sure, bad cess to me, but it was on your account I did it.”
A vile grin, or rather an awkward blank smile, forced by an affectation of gallantry, accompanied the lie which he uttered.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” replied Lilly, “on my 'account, don't think to pass that upon me; however, I can forgive you a great many things in consequence of your behavior—just now.”
“And yet you abused me for it,” he replied, laughing, “but sure I knew that a purty girl always likes to be kissed; bad cess to me, but the same behavior comes naturally to me.”
“Go now,” said Lilly, with a comic and peremptory manner; “go your rounds, I say; you know very well that I mane your behavior about the shawl, and not your great strong impudence.”
The pedlar, after winking and nodding meanings into her words that she had never thought of, slung his pack over his shoulder as usual, and proceeded on his rounds.
We have always been of opinion that there is scarcely anything more mysterious than the speed with which popular report travels apparently with very inadequate machinery throughout a large district of country. Before the day was more than half-advanced, fame had succeeded in circulating a report that Matthew Purcel and Dr. Turbot had been both shot dead in the garden of the rectory. This report spread rapidly, and it is with equal pain and shame we are obliged to confess that in general it was received with evident and undisguised satisfaction. John and Alick Purcel, on their way home, were accosted at a place called “Murderer's Corner,” by two of the men who had attended at their father's office that morning, and informed that he and Dr. Turbot had been murdered in the course of the day, a piece of information which was conveyed by them with a sneer of cowardly triumph that was perfectly diabolical.
“God save ye, gintlemen!” said one of them, with a peculiar emphasis on the last word; “did ye here the news?”