, "I ought to be up at Crocknavorrigha this
blessed evening. Joe Neale was to be married to-day."

"Joe! is it Joe?" said the butler.

"I wish her luck of him, whoever she is!" added the cook.

"Faix, and he's a smart boy!" chimed in the housemaid, with something
not far from a blush as she spoke.

"He was a raal devil for coortin', anyhow!" said the butler.

"It's just for peace he's marrying now, then," said Darby; "the women
never gave him any quietness. Just so, Kitty; you need n't be looking
cross that way,--it 's truth I'm telling you. They were always coming
about him, and teasing him, and the like, and he could n't bear it any
longer."

"Arrah, howld your prate!" interrupted the old cook, whose indignation
for the honor of the sex could not endure more. "He's the biggest liar
from this to himself; and that same 's not a small word. Darby M'Keown."

There was a pointedness in the latter part of this speech which might
have led to angry consequences, had I not interposed by asking Mr.
M'Keown himself if he ever was in love.

"Arrah, it 's wishing it, I am, the same love. Sure my back and sides
is sore with it; my misfortunes would fill a book. Did n't I bind myself
apprentice to a carpenter for love of Molly Scraw, a niece he had, just
to be near her and be looking at her; and that 's the way I shaved off
the top of my thumb with the plane. By the mortial, it was near killing
me. I usedn't to eat or drink; and though I was three years at the
thrade, faix, at the end of it, I could n't tell you the gimlet from the
handsaw!"

"And you wor never married, Mister M'Keown?" said Kitty.

"Never, my darling, but often mighty near it. Many 's the quare thing
happened to me," said Darby, meditatingly; "and sure if it was n't my
guardian angel, or something of the kind, prevented it, I 'd maybe have
more wives this day than the Emperor of Roossia himself."

"Arrah, don't be talking!" grunted out the old cook, whose passion could
scarcely be restrained at the boastful tone Mister M'Keown assumed in
descanting on his successes.

"There was Biddy Finn," continued Darby, without paying any attention
to the cook's interruption; "she might be Mrs. M'Keown this day, av it
wasn't for a remarkable thing that happened."

"What was that?" said Kitty, with eager curiosity.

"Tell us about it. Mister M'Keown," said the butler.

"The devil a word of truth he'll tell you," grumbled the cook, as she
raked the ashes with a