Library of the Worlds Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Volume 4 | Page 9

him every half-minute,
until at last Mr. Jeremiah Mulcahy strode into the kitchen: a tall,
ill-contrived figure, that had once been well fitted out, but that now
wore its old skin, like its old clothes, very loosely; and those old
clothes were a discolored, threadbare, half-polished kerseymere pair of
trousers, and aged superfine black coat, the last relics of his former
Sunday finery,--to which had recently and incongruously been added a
calfskin vest, a pair of coarse sky-blue peasant's stockings, and a pair of
brogues. His hanging cheeks and lips told, together, his present bad
living and domestic subjection; and an eye that had been blinded by the
smallpox wore neither patch nor band, although in better days it used to
be genteelly hidden from remark,--an assumption of consequence now
deemed incompatible with his altered condition in society.

"O Cauth! oh, I had such a dhrame," he said, as he made his
appearance.
"An' I'll go bail you had," answered Cauth, "an' when do you ever go
asleep without having one dhrame or another, that pesters me off o' my
legs the livelong day, till the night falls again to let you have another?
Musha, Jer, don't be ever an' always such a fool; an' never mind the
dhrame now, but lend a hand to help me in the work o' the house. See
the pewther there: haive it up, man alive, an' take it out into the garden,
and sit on the big stone in the sun, an' make it look as well as you can,
afther the ill usage it got last night; come, hurry, Jer--go an' do what I
bid you."
He retired in silence to "the garden," a little patch of ground luxuriant
in potatoes and a few cabbages. Mrs. Mulcahy pursued her work till her
own sensations warned her that it was time to prepare her husband's
morning or rather day meal; for by the height of the sun it should now
be many hours past noon. So she put down her pot of potatoes; and
when they were boiled, took out a wooden trencher full of them, and a
mug of sour milk, to Jer, determined not to summon him from his
useful occupation of restoring the pints and quarts to something of their
former shape.
Stepping through the back door, and getting him in view, she stopped
short in silent anger. His back was turned to her, because of the sun;
and while the vessels, huddled about in confusion, seemed little the
better of his latent skill and industry, there he sat on his favorite round
stone, studiously perusing, half aloud to himself, some idle volume
which doubtless he had smuggled into the garden in his pocket. Laying
down her trencher and her mug, Mrs. Mulcahy stole forward on tiptoe,
gained his shoulder without being heard, snatched the imperfect bundle
of soiled pages out of his hand, and hurled it into a neighbor's
cabbage-bed.
Jeremiah complained, in his usual half-crying tone, declaring that "she
never could let him alone, so she couldn't, and he would rather list for a
soger than lade such a life, from year's end to year's end, so he would."

"Well, an' do then--an' whistle that idle cur off wid you," pointing to a
nondescript puppy, which had lain happily coiled up at his master's feet
until Mrs. Mulcahy's appearance, but that now watched her closely, his
ears half cocked and his eyes wide open, though his position remained
unaltered. "Go along to the divil, you lazy whelp you!"--she took up a
pint in which a few drops of beer remained since the previous night,
and drained it on the puppy's head, who instantly ran off, jumping
sideways, and yelping as loud as if some bodily injury had really
visited him--"Yes, an' now you begin to yowl, like your masther, for
nothing at all, only because a body axes you to stir your idle
legs--hould your tongue, you foolish baste!" she stooped for a
stone--"one would think I scalded you."
"You know you did, once, Cauth, to the backbone; an' small blame for
Shuffle to be afeard o' you ever since," said Jer.
This vindication of his own occasional remonstrances, as well as of
Shuffle's, was founded in truth. When very young, just to keep him
from running against her legs while she was busy over the fire, Mrs.
Mulcahy certainly had emptied a ladleful of boiling potato-water upon
the poor puppy's back; and from that moment it was only necessary to
spill a drop of the coldest possible water, or of any cold liquid, on any
part of his body, and he believed he was again dreadfully scalded, and
ran out of the house screaming in all the fancied theories of torture.
"Will you ate your good dinner, now, Jer