ighted with it? Confess, now, isn't it beautiful?"

This question regarding the merits of their country, which I have
remarked is put by most Irish persons, being answered in a satisfactory
manner, and the shouts of the infants appeased from an apple-stall
hard by, Dennis and I talked of old times; I congratulated him on his
marriage with the lovely girl whom we all admired, and hoped he had a
fortune with her, and so forth. His appearance, however, did not bespeak
a great fortune: he had an old grey hat, short old trousers, an old
waistcoat with regimental buttons, and patched Blucher boots, such as
are not usually sported by persons in easy life.

"Ah!" says he, with a sigh, in reply to my queries, "times are changed
since them days, Fitz-Boodle. My wife's not what she was--the beautiful
creature you knew her. Molloy, my boy, run off in a hurry to your mamma,
and tell her an English gentleman is coming home to dine; for you'll
dine with me, Fitz, in course?" And I agreed to partake of that meal;
though Master Molloy altogether declined to obey his papa's orders with
respect to announcing the stranger.

"Well, I must announce you myself," said Haggarty, with a smile. "Come,
it's just dinner-time, and my little cottage is not a hundred yards
off." Accordingly, we all marched in procession to Dennis's little
cottage, which was one of a row and a half of one-storied houses, with
little courtyards before them, and mostly with very fine names on the
doorposts of each. "Surgeon Haggarty" was emblazoned on Dennis's gate,
on a stained green copper-plate; and, not content with this, on the
door-post above the bell was an oval with the inscription of "New
Molloyville." The bell was broken, of course; the court, or garden-path,
was mouldy, weedy, seedy; there were some dirty rocks, by way of
ornament, round a faded glass-plat in the centre, some clothes and
rags hanging out of most part of the windows of New Molloyville, the
immediate entrance to which was by a battered scraper, under a broken
trellis-work, up which a withered creeper declined any longer to climb.

"Small, but snug," says Haggarty: "I'll lead the way, Fitz; put your hat
on the flower-pot there, and turn to the left into the drawing-room."
A fog of onions and turf-smoke filled the whole of the house, and gave
signs that dinner was not far off. Far off? You could hear it frizzling
in the kitchen, where the maid was also endeavouring to hush the crying
of a third