t, instead
of that,' said she, holding out a very purty foot, 'he has made them as
sharp in the toe as a pick-axe, and a full mile too short for me. But
why do ye ax was I out, Katty?'

* Paddy Mellon--a short, thick-set man, with gray hair,
which he always kept cropped close--the most famous
shoemaker in the parish: in fact the Drummond of a large
district. No shoes considered worth wearing if he did not
make them. But, having admitted this, I am bound in common
justice and honesty to say that so big a liar never put an
awl into leather. No language could describe his iniquity in
this respect. I myself am a living-witness of this. Many a
trudge has the villain taken out of me in my boyhood, and as
sure as I went on the appointed day--which was always
Saturday--so surely did he swear that they would be ready
for me on that day week. He was, as a tradesman, the most
multifarious and barefaced liar I ever met; and what was the
most rascally trait about him, was the faculty he possessed
of making you believe the lie as readily after the fifteenth
repetition of it, as when it was uttered fresh from his
lips.

"'Oh, nothing,' responded Katty, 'only that you missed a sight, anyway.'

"'What was it Kitty, ahagur?' asked her companion with mighty great
curiosity.

"'Why, nothing less, indeed, nor Rose Cullenan decked out in a white
muslin gown, and a black sprush bonnet, tied under her chin wid a
silk ribbon, no less; but what killed us out and out was--you wouldn't
guess?'

"'Arrah, how could I guess, woman alive? A silk handkerchy, maybe; for I
wouldn't doubt the same Rose but she would be setting herself up for the
likes of such a thing.'

"'It's herself that had, as red as scarlet, about her neck; but that's
not it.'

"'Arrah, Katty, tell it to us at wanst; out with it, ahagur; sure
there's no treason in it, anyhow.'

"'Why, thin, nothing less nor a crass-bar red-and-white
pocket-handkerchy, to wipe her purty complexion wid!'

"To this Peggy replied by a loud laugh, in which it was difficult to say
whether there was more of satire than astonishment.

"'A pocket-handkerchy!' she exclaimed; 'musha, are we alive afther
that, at all at all! Why, that bates Molly M'Cullagh and her red mantle
entirely. I'm sure, but it's well come up for the likes of her, a poor,
imperint crathur, that sprung from nothing, to give herself such airs