upboard, and warm for him, upon the greeshaugh, (* hot
embers) them yallow-legs (* a kind of potato) that's in the colindher;
though God he knows it's ill my common (* It's ill-becoming--or it ill
becomes me, to everlook his conduct)--but no matther, ahagur! There's
enough said, I'm thinking--give them to him."

On Ned seating himself to his bacon and potatoes, Nancy would light
another pipe, and plant herself on the opposite hob, putting some
interrogatory to him, in the way of business--always concerning a third
person, and still in a tone of dry ironical indifference: as--

"Did you see Jimmy Connolly on your travels?"

"No."

"Humph! Can you tell us if Andy Morrow sould his coult?"

"He did."

"May be you have _gumption_ enough to know what he got for him?"

"Fifteen guineas."

"In troth, and it's more nor a poor body would get; but, anyway, Andy
Morrow desarves to get a good price; he's a man that takes care of his
own business, and minds nothing else. I wish that filly of ours was
dockt; you ought to spake to Jim M'Quade about her: it's time to make
her up--you know, we'll want to sell her for the rint."

This was an assertion, by the way, which Ned knew to have everything but
truth in it.

"Never heed the filly," Ned would reply, "I'll get Charley Lawdher (*
A blacksmith, and an honest man) to dock her--but it's not her I'm
thinking of: did you hear the news about the tobacky?"

"No; but I hope we won't be long go."

"Well, any how, we wor in luck to buy in them three last rowls."

"Eh?--in luck? death-alive, how, Ned?"

"Sure there was three ships of it lost last week, on their way from the
kingdom of Swuzerland, in the Aist Indians, where it grows: we can rise
it thruppence a-pound now."

"No, Ned! you're not in airnest?"

"Faith, Nancy, you may say I am; and as soon as Tom Loan comes home from
Dublin, he'll tell us all about it; and for that matther, maybe it may
rise sixpence a-pound; any how we'll gain a lob by it, I'm thinking."

"May I never stir, but that's luck! Well, Ned, you may thank me for
that, any way, or sorra rowl we'd have in the four corners of the
house; and you wanted to persuade me against buying them; but I knew
betther--for the tobacky's always sure to get a bit of a hitch at this
time o' the year."

"Bedad, you can do it, Nancy: I'll say that for you--that is, and give
you your own way."

"Eh!--can't I, Ned? And, what waa betther, I bate down Pether M'Entee
three-