self mounts of that expinsive discripshin?"

"Musha, good gracious, man, promise him the first thruppinny-bit you
meet floatin' down the river on a grindstone, and you'll be buyin' every
hair in his tail," said the old man. "But come along and don't be
delayin' thim. They're goin' after fairin's for their sweethearts, the
way you'd be yourself if you worn't too great a naygur. Or, maybe,
there isn't anythin' good enough for her to be had in Ballybrosna--is
that the raison of it?"

Little Joe was beginning to say in a resentful shout: "Naygur
yourself--he and I are goin' to get----" But Denis pulled him on
jocularly by the collar, and the parties went their several ways.

Ody then said: "Sweethearts is it? He's the quare ould man for talkin'.
Glory be to the great goodness, I'm throubled wid ne'er a one. 'Here's
out of it,' sez I. 'Onnathural,' sez he, musha cock him up, and himself
shoein' ould garrons all the days of his life. Hi along, Rory, jewel!"

But Hugh said, meditatively, and more than half to himself, which was
rather a habit of his: "Well, now, for the matter of the fairin', it's
just the best len'th of ribbon I can get thim to give me for a shillin'.
Yella it's to be. I wasn't long aither plannin' a way to find out the
colour she'd like. Sure, I gave her a bunch of flowers wid poppies in
it, and daisies, and furze-blossom, and foxglove, and forgit-me-not, and
midowsweet, and sez I to her, which of thim was the finest coloured.
And, sez she, the furze-blossom was, be raison of it bein' the bright
gould all over, that the others had mostly only a spark of somewheres
inside. So it's to be yella. Tellin' you the truth, I'd liefer she
wouldn't be wearin' e'er such a thing at all, anyways not in her hair,
that's a sight purtier just in the big black twists. But, sure, it's the
fancy she has, and morebetoken, I think bad of me lettin' the little
goat swally the weeny bit she had on her. Ay bedad, I'd a right to be
bringin' it to her; and, at all evints, I'd be doin' a foolish thing to
come home widout it, and me not gettin' the bit of fat bacon these six
weeks next Saturday to make up the price. I won'er now what len'th
they'd give you for one shillin'?"

But Ody, who had not been listening, only said, oracularly: "Och! that's
accordin'," which did not materially assist Hugh's speculations.

Yellow ribbons were not plentiful at Ballybrosna fair, and Hugh
McInerney had to ask for them vainly at several stalls b