st in white.'

"'Who made it, Rose?' inquired Katty; 'for it sits illegant'

"'Indeed,' replied Rose, 'for the differ of the price, I thought it
better to bring it to Peggy Boyle, and be sartin of not having it
spoiled. Nelly Keenan made the last; and although there was a full
breadth more in it nor this, bad cess to the one of her but spoiled it
on me; it was ever so much too short in the body, and too tight in the
sleeves, and then I had no step at all at all.'

"'The sprush bonnet is exactly the fit for the gown,' observed Katty;
'the black and the white's jist the cut--how many yards had you, Rose?'

"'Jist ten and a half; but the half-yard was for the tucks.'

"'Ay, faix! and brave full tucks she left in it; ten would do me, Rose?'

"'Ten!--no, nor ten and a half; you're a size bigger nor me at the
laste, Peggy; but you'd be asy fitted, you're so well made.'

"'Rose, _darling_,' said Peggy, 'that's a great beauty, and shows off
your complexion all to pieces; you have no notion how well you look in
it and the sprush.'

"In a few minutes after this her namesake, Rose Galh O'Hallaghan, came
towards the chapel, in society with her father, mother, and her two
sisters. The eldest, Mary, was about twenty-one; Rose, who was the
second, about nineteen, or scarcely that; and Nancy, the junior of the
three, about twice seven.

"'There's the O'Hallaghans,' says Rose.

"'Ay,' replied Katty; 'you may talk of beauty, now; did you ever lay
your two eyes on the likes of Rose for downright--musha, if myself knows
what to call it--but, anyhow, she's the lovely crathur to look at.'

"Kind reader, without a single disrespectful insinuation against any
portion of the fair sex, you may judge what Rose O'Hallaghan must have
been, when even these three were necessitated to praise her in her
absence!

"'I'll warrant,' observed Katty, 'we'll soon be after seeing John
O'Callaghan'--(he was my own cousin)--'sthrolling afther them, at his
ase.'

"'Why,' asked Rose, 'what makes you say that?'

"'Bekase,' replied the other, I've a rason for it.'

"'Sure John O'Callaghan wouldn't be thinking of her,' observed Rose,
'and their families would see other shot: their factions would never
have a crass marriage, anyhow.'

"'Well,' said Peggy, 'it's the thousand pities that the same two
couldn't go together; for fair and handsome as Rose is, you'll not deny
but John comes up to her; but I faix! sure enough it's they that's the
proud pe