and coaxingly putting his head over her fair shoulder, to pat her
gently on her peachy cheek, and cry "_Baa!_"

CHAPTER IX

Andy was in sad disgrace for some days with his mother; but, like all
mothers, she soon forgave the blunders of her son--and indeed mothers
are well off who have not more than blunders to forgive. Andy did all
in his power to make himself useful at home, now that he was out of
place and dependent on his mother, and got a day's work here and there
where he could. Fortunately the season afforded him more employment
than winter months would have done. But the farmers soon had all their
crops made up, and when Andy could find no work to be paid for, he
began to cut the "scrap o' meadow," as he called it, on a small field
of his mother's. Indeed, it was but a "scrap;" for the place where it
grew was one of those broken bits of ground so common in the vicinity
of mountain ranges, where rocks, protruding through the soil, give the
notion of a very fine crop of stones. Now, this locality gave to Andy
the opportunity of exercising a bit of his characteristic ingenuity;
for when the hay was ready for "cocking," he selected a good thumping
rock as the foundation for his haystack, and the superstructure
consequently cut a more respectable figure than one could have
anticipated from the appearance of the little crop as it lay on the
ground; and as no vestige of the rock was visible, the widow, when she
came out to see the work completed, wondered and rejoiced at the size
of the haystack, and said, "God bless you, Andy, but you're the natest
hand for putting up a bit o' hay I ever seen; throth, I didn't think
there was the half of it in it!" Little did the widow know that the
cock of hay was as great a cheat as a bottle of champagne--more than
half bottom. It was all very well for the widow to admire her hay; but
at last she came to sell it, and such sales are generally effected in
Ireland by the purchaser buying "in the lump," as it is called, that
is, calculating the value of the hay from the appearance of the stack
as it stands, and drawing it away upon his own cars. Now, as luck would
have it, it was Andy's early acquaintance, Owny na Coppal, bought the
hay; and in consideration of the _lone woman_, gave her as good a
price as he could afford--for Owny was an honest, open-hearted fellow,
though he was a horse-dealer; so he paid the widow the price of her hay
on the spot, and said he would draw it