u ought to know, Dick Cuillenan, who you spake to, before
you make the freedom you do'

"'But you don't know, says Dick, 'that I'm a great hand at spoiling the
girls' knitting,--it's a fashion I've got,' says he.

"'It's a fashion, then,' says Mary, 'that'll be apt to get you a broken
mouth, sometime'.*

* It is no unusual thing in Ireland for a country girl to
repulse a fellow whom she thinks beneath her, if not by a
flat at least by a flattening refusal; nor is it seldom that
the "argumentum fistycuffum" resorted to on such occasions.
I have more than once seen a disagreeable lover receive,
from that fair hand which he sought, so masterly a blow,
that a bleeding nose rewarded his ambition, and silenced for
a time his importunity.

"'Then,' says Dick, 'whoever does that must marry me.'

"'And them that gets you, will have a prize to brag of,' says she; 'stop
yourself, Cuillenan---single your freedom, and double your distance, if
you plase; I'll cut my coat off no such cloth.'

"'Well, Mary,' says he, 'maybe, if _you_, don't, as good will; but you
won't be so cruel as all that comes to--the worst side of you is out, I
think.'

"He was now beginning to make greater freedom; but Mary rises from her
seat, and whisks away with herself, her cheek as red as a rose with
vexation at the fellow's imperance. 'Very well,' says Dick, 'off you go;
but there's as good fish in the say as ever was catched.--I'm sorry to
see, Susy,' says he to her mother, 'that Mary's no friend of mine, and
I'd be mighty glad to find it otherwise; for, to tell the truth, I'd
wish to become connected with the family. In the mane time, hadn't
you better get us a glass, till we drink one bottle on the head of it,
anyway.'

"'Why, then, Dick Cuillenan,' says the mother, 'I don't wish you
anything else than good luck and happiness; but, as to Mary, She's not
for you herself, nor would it be a good match between the families
at all. Mary is to have her grandfather's sixty guineas; and the two
_moulleens_* that her uncle Jack left her four years ago has brought
her a good stock for any farm. Now if she married you, Dick, where's the
farm to bring her to?--surely it's not upon them seven acres of stone
and bent, upon the long Esker,** that I'd let my daughter go to live.
So, Dick, put up your bottle, and in the name of God, go home, boy, and
mind your business; but, above all, when you want a wife, go to them
t