n
bronchitis, which I had no difficulty in pronouncing to be Corny's.

"Yes, come in," cried I; "what hour is it?"

"Somewhere after ten," replied he, sulkily; "you're the first I ever
heerd ask the clock, in the eight years I have lived here. Are ye ready
for your morning?"

"My what?" said I, with some surprise.

"Didn't I say it, plain enough? Is it the brogue that bothers you?"

As he said this with a most sarcastic grin he poured, from a large jug
he held in one hand, a brimming goblet full of some white compound,
and handed it over to me. Preferring at once to explore, rather than to
question the intractable Corny, I put it to my lips, and found it to be
capital milk punch, concocted with great skill, and seasoned with what
O'Grady afterwards called "a notion of nutmeg."

"Oh! devil fear you, that he'll like it. Sorrow one of you ever left as
much in the jug as 'ud make a foot-bath for a flea."

"They don't treat you over well, then, Corny," said I, purposely opening
the sorest wound of his nature.

"Trate me well! faix, them that 'ud come here for good tratement, would
go to the devil for divarsion. There's Master Phil himself, that I used
to bate, when he was a child, many's the time, when his father, rest his
sowl, was up at the coorts--ay, strapped him, till he hadn't a spot that
wasn't sore an him--and look at him now; oh, wirra! you'd think I never
took a ha'porth of pains with him. Ugh!--the haythins!--the Turks!"

"This is all very bad, Corny; hand me those boots."

"And thim's boots!" said he, with a contemptuous expression on his face
that would have struck horror to the heart of Hoby. "Well, well." Here
he looked up as though the profligacy and degeneracy of the age were
transgressing all bounds. "When you're ready, come over to the master's,
for he's waiting breakfast for you. A beautiful hour for breakfast, it
is! Many's the day his father sintenced a whole dockful before the same
time!"

With the comforting reflection that the world went better in his youth,
Corny drained the few remaining drops of the jug, and, muttering the
while something that did not sound exactly like a blessing, waddled out
of the room with a gait of the most imposing gravity.

I had very little difficulty in finding my friend's quarters; for, as
his door lay open, and as he himself was carolling away, at the very top
of his lungs, some popular melody of the day, I speedily found myself
beyond the threshold.

"A