knee here for a
few minutes or so, and that'd warm me better than all the 'tay' in
the world."

Aby showed by his face that he was immeasurably disgusted by the
iniquitous coarseness of this overture. Miss O'Dwyer, however,
looking at the gentleman's age, and his state as regarded liquor,
passed it over as of no moment whatsoever. So that when, in the
later part of the evening, Aby expressed to that young lady his deep
disgust, she merely said, "Oh, bother; what matters an old man like
that?"

And then, when they were at this pass, Mr. O'Dwyer came in. He did
not interfere much with his daughter in the bar room, but he would
occasionally take a dandy of punch there, and ask how things were
going on in doors. He was a fat, thickset man, with a good-humoured
face, a flattened nose, and a great aptitude for stable occupations.
He was part owner of the Kanturk car, as has been before said, and
was the proprietor of sundry other cars, open cars and covered cars,
plying for hire in the streets of Cork.

"I hope the mare took your honour well down to Kanturk and back
again," said he, addressing his elder customer with a chuck of his
head intended for a bow.

"I don't know what you call well," said Mr. Mollett. "She hadn't a
leg to stand upon for the last three hours."

"Not a leg to stand upon! Faix, then, and it's she'd have the four
good legs if she travelled every inch of the way from Donagh-a-Dee to
Ti-vora," to which distance Mr. O'Dwyer specially referred as being
supposed to be the longest known in Ireland.

"She may be able to do that; but I'm blessed if she's fit to go to
Kanturk and back."

"She's done the work, anyhow," said Mr. O'Dwyer, who evidently
thought that this last argument was conclusive.

"And a precious time she's been about it. Why, my goodness, it would
have been better for me to have walked it. As Sir Thomas said to
me--"

"What! did you see Sir Thomas Fitzgerald?"

Hereupon Aby gave his father a nudge; but the father either did not
appreciate the nudge, or did not choose to obey it.

"Yes; I did see him. Why shouldn't I?"

"Only they do say he's hard to get to speak to now-a-days. He's not
over well, you know, these years back."

"Well or ill he'll see me, I take it, when I go that distance to ask
him. There's no doubt about that; is there, Aby?"

"Can't say, I'm sure, not knowing the gentleman," said Aby.

"We holds land from Sir Thomas, we do; that is, me and my brother
Mick,