l have my blessin', sir; and proud I'll be--and proud the girl
ought to be--_that_ I'll say. And suppose, now, you'd come over on
Sunday, and take share of a plain man's dinner, and take your pick o'
the girls--there's a fine bull goose that Nance towld me she'd have
ready afther last mass; for Father Ulick said he'd come and dine with
us."

"I can't, Mat; I must be in the canal boat on Sunday; but I'll go and
breakfast with you to-morrow, on my way to Bill Mooney's, who has a
fine lot of pigs to sell--remarkable fine pigs."

"Well, we'll expect you to breakfast, sir."

"Mat, there must be no nonsense about the wedding."

"As you plase, sir."

"Just marry her off, and take her home. Short reckonings make long
friends."

"Thrue for you, sir."

"Nothing to give with the girl, you say?"

"My blessin' only, sir."

"Well, you must throw in that butther, Mat, and take the farthin' off."

"It's yours, sir," said Mat, delighted, loading Flanagan with "Good
byes," and "God save yous," until they should meet next morning at
breakfast.

Mat rode home in great glee at the prospect of providing so well for one
of his girls, and told them a man would be there the next morning to
make choice of one of them for his wife. The girls, very naturally,
inquired who the man was; to which Mat, in the plenitude of patriarchal
power, replied, "that was nothing to them;" and his daughters had
sufficient experience of his temper to know there was no use in asking
more questions after such an answer. He only added, she would be "well
off that should get him." Now, their father being such a curmudgeon,
it is no wonder the girls were willing to take the chance of a
good-humoured husband instead of an iron-handed father; so they set to
work to make themselves as smart as possible for the approaching trial
of their charms, and a battle royal ensued between the sisters as to
the right and title to certain pieces of dress which were hitherto
considered a sort of common property amongst them, and of which the
occasion of a fair, or a pattern,[4] or market-day was enough to
establish the possession, by whichever of the girls went to the public
place; but now, when a husband was to be won, privilege of all sorts was
pleaded, in which discussion there was more noise than sound reason, and
so many violent measures to secure the envied _morceaux_, that some
destruction of finery took place where there was none to spare; and, at
last, seniority