."

"Och, troth you're right, I forgot that--but you surely didn't come
far, if one's to judge by your dress; though, God knows, far or near,
you have the light coverin' an you for such a morning as this is, the
Lord be praised!"

"I came better than three miles," replied the woman.

"Than what?"

"Than three miles."

"Saver above, is it possible! without cloak or bonnet, shoe or
stockin'--an' you have your affliction at home, too, poor thing; why the
Lord look down an you, an' pity you I pray his blessed name this day!
Stop, I must warm you a drink of brave new milk, and that'll help to
put the cowld out of your heart--sit round here, from the breath of that
back door--I'll have it ready for you in a jiffey; throth will I, an'
you'll see it'll warm you and do you good."

"God help me," exclaimed the woman, "I'll take the drink, bekase I
wouldn't refuse your kind heart; but it's not meat, nor drink, nor
cowld, nor storm, that's throublin' me--I could bear all that, and many
a time did--but then I had _him!_ but now who's to comfort us--who are
we to look to--who is to be our friend? Oh, in the wide world--but God
is good!"--said she, checking herself from a pious apprehension that
she was not sufficiently submissive to his will, "God is good--but still
it's hard to think of losing him."

"Well, you won't lose him, I hope," said the good creature, stirring
the new milk with a spoon, and tasting it to ascertain if it was warm
enough--"Of coorse it's your husband you--whitch! whitch!--the divil be
off you for a skillet, I've a'most scalded myself wid you--it's so thin
that it has a thing boilin' before you could say Jack Robinson. Here
now, achora, try it, an' take care it's not a trifle too hot--it'll
comfort you, anyhow."

It is in a country like Ireland, where there is so much of that close
and wasting poverty which constitutes absolute misery, that these
beautiful gushes of pure and tender humanity are to be found, which
spring in the obscurity of life out of the natural goodness and
untutored piety of the Irish heart. It is these virtues, unseen and
unknown, as they generally are, except by the humble individuals on whom
they are exerted--that so often light up by their radiance the
darkness and destitution of the cold and lowly cabin, and that gives an
unconscious sense of cheerfulness under great privations, which
those who do not know the people often attribute to other and more
discreditable causes.