“Is it give, sir? Thin, is there anything I wouldn’t give for my eighty-sivin pound tin, sir; and it’s murdered I am by ould Phillips.”
“Never mind him; there were two twenties, were there not?”
“Oh, holy mother, sir, there was! Two most illigant twenties! and Ted Conner—and Phalim—which Rielly——”
He faltered, and stopped as our friend, with much ostentatious rustling of the crisp paper, produced a new twenty, and then the other twenty, and then a ten, and then a five, and so forth. Meanwhile, the man occasionally murmuring an exclamation of surprise or a protestation of gratitude, but gradually becoming vague and remote in the latter as the notes reappeared, looked on, staring, evidently inclined to believe that they were the real lost notes, reproduced in that state by some chemical process. At last they were all told out, and in his pocket, and he still stood staring and muttering, “Oh, holy mother, only to think of it! Sir, it’s bound to you forever, that I am!”—but more vaguely and remotely now than ever.
“Well,” said our friend, “what do you propose to give me for this?”
After staring and rubbing his chin for some time longer, he replied with the unexpected question—
“Do you like bacon?”
“Very much,” said our friend.
“Then it’s a side as I’ll bring your honor to-morrow morning, and a bucket of new milk—and ould Phillips——”
“Come,” said our friend, glancing at a notable shillelah the man had under his arm, “let me undeceive you. I don’t want anything of you, and I am very glad you have got your money back. But I suppose you’d stand by me, now, if I wanted a boy to help me in a little skirmish?”