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

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 Mulcahy, an' promise to do something to help me, afther it?--Mother o' Saints!"--thus she interrupted herself, turning towards the place where she had deposited the eulogized food--"see that yon unlucky bird! May I never do an ill turn but there's the pig afther spilling the sweet milk, an' now shoveling the beautiful white-eyes down her throat at a mouthful!"
Jer, really afflicted at this scene, promised to work hard the moment he got his dinner; and his spouse, first procuring a pitchfork to beat the pig into her sty, prepared a fresh meal for him, and retired to eat her own in the house, and then to continue her labor.
In about an hour she thought of paying him another