might be seen screened behind
a hedge, with their backs to the spectators taking the papers off their
curls before small bit of looking-glass placed against the ditch; or
perhaps putting on their shoes and stockings--which phrase can be used
only by the authority of the figure _heusteron proteron_--inasmuch as if
they put on the shoes first, you persave, it would be a scientific job
to get on the stockings after; but it's an idiomatioal expression, and
therefore justifiable. However, it's a general custom in the country,
which I dare to say has not yet spread into large cities, for the young
women to walk bare-footed to the chapel, or within a short distance
of it, that they may exhibit their bleached thread stockings and
well-greased slippers to the best advantage, not pretermitting a
well-turned ankle and neat leg, which, I may fearlessly assert, my fair
country-women can show against any other nation, living or dead.

"One sunny Sabbath, the congregation of Knockimdowny were thus
assimilated, amusing themselves in the manner I have just outlined; a
series of country girls sat on a little green mount, called the Rabbit
Bank, from the circumstance of its having been formerly an open burrow,
though of late years it has been closed. It was near twelve o'clock,
the hour at which Father Luke O'Shaughran was generally seen topping the
rise of the hill at Larry Mulligan's public-house, jogging on his bay
hack at something between a walk and a trot--that is to say, his horse
moved his fore and hind legs on the off side at one motion, and the
fore and hind legs of the near side in another, going at a kind of dog's
trot, like the pace of an idiot with sore feet in a shower--a pace,
indeed, to which the animal had been set for the last sixteen years, but
beyond which, no force, or entreaty, or science, or power, either divine
or human, of his Reverence could drive him. As yet, however, he had not
become apparent; and the girls already mentioned were discussing the
pretensions which several of their acquaintances had to dress or beauty.

"'Peggy,' said Katy Carroll to her companion, Peggy Donohue, 'were you
out* last Sunday?'

* Out.--This expression in remote parts of the country is
understood to mean being at mass.

"'No, in troth, Katty, I was disappointed in getting my shoes from Paddy
Mellon, though I left him the measure for my foot three weeks agone,
and gave him a thousand warnings to make them duck-nebs; bu