trousers, and aged superfine black coat, the last relics of his former
Sunday finery,--to which had recently and incongruously been added a
calfskin vest, a pair of coarse sky-blue peasant's stockings, and a pair
of brogues. His hanging cheeks and lips told, together, his present bad
living and domestic subjection; and an eye that had been blinded by the
smallpox wore neither patch nor band, although in better days it used to
be genteelly hidden from remark,--an assumption of consequence now
deemed incompatible with his altered condition in society.

"O Cauth! oh, I had such a dhrame," he said, as he made his appearance.

"An' I'll go bail you had," answered Cauth, "an' when do you ever go
asleep without having one dhrame or another, that pesters me off o' my
legs the livelong day, till the night falls again to let you have
another? Musha, Jer, don't be ever an' always such a fool; an' never
mind the dhrame now, but lend a hand to help me in the work o' the
house. See the pewther there: haive it up, man alive, an' take it out
into the garden, and sit on the big stone in the sun, an' make it look
as well as you can, afther the ill usage it got last night; come, hurry,
Jer--go an' do what I bid you."

He retired in silence to "the garden," a little patch of ground
luxuriant in potatoes and a few cabbages. Mrs. Mulcahy pursued her work
till her own sensations warned her that it was time to prepare her
husband's morning or rather day meal; for by the height of the sun it
should now be many hours past noon. So she put down her pot of potatoes;
and when they were boiled, took out a wooden trencher full of them, and
a mug of sour milk, to Jer, determined not to summon him from his useful
occupation of restoring the pints and quarts to something of their
former shape.