During her bustle the dame would stop an instant, and bend her ear to
listen for a stir inside the partition; but at last losing patience she
resumed:--

"Why, then, my heavy hatred on you, Jer Mulcahy, is it gone into a
_sauvaun_ [pleasant drowsiness] you are, over again? or maybe you stole
out of bed, an' put your hand on one o' them ould good-for-nothing
books, that makes you the laziest man that a poor woman ever had tinder
one roof wid her? ay, an' that sent you out of our dacent shop an'
house, in the heart of the town below, an' banished us here, Jer
Mulcahy, to sell drams o' whisky an' pots o' beer to all the riff-raff
o' the counthry-side, instead o' the nate boots an' shoes you served
your honest time to?"

She entered his, or her chamber, rather, hoping that she might detect
him luxuriantly perusing in bed one of the mutilated books, a love of
which (or more truly a love of indolence, thus manifesting itself) had
indeed chiefly caused his downfall in the world. Her husband, however,
really tired after his unusual bodily efforts of the previous day, only
slumbered, as Mrs. Mulcahy had at first anticipated; and when she had
shaken and aroused him, for the twentieth time that morning, and scolded
him until the spirit-broken blockhead whimpered,--nay, wept, or
pretended to weep,--the dame returned to her household duties.

She did not neglect, however, to keep calling to him every half-minute,
until at last Mr. Jeremiah Mulcahy strode into the kitchen: a tall,
ill-contrived figure, that had once been well fitted out, but that now
wore its old skin, like its old clothes, very loosely; and those old
clothes were a discolored, threadbare, half-polished kerseymere pair of