him for to get off your flower-beds with the colour of anger in your mouth
he'd let a roar out of him like a Sligo piper with poteen taken, and fetch
you a skelp with his horns that would lay you out for dead.

And sorra the use is it of complainin' to Herself.

"Ah, Delaney, 'tis the marshal sperit widin him," she'd say; "we must be
patient with him for the sake of the owld rigiment;" and with that she'd
start hand-feedin' him with warmed-up sponge-cake and playin' with his long
silky hair.

"Far be it from me," I says to Mikeen, the herd, "to question the workings
o' Providence, but were I the Colonel of a rigiment, which I am not, and
_had_ to have a mascot, it's not a raparee billy I'd be afther havin', but
a nanny, or mebbe a cow, that would step along dacently with the rigiment
and bring ye luck, and mebbe a dropeen o' milk for the orficers' tea as
well. If it's such cratures that bring ye fortune may I die a peaceful
death in a poor-house," says I.

"I'm wid ye," says Mikeen, groanin', he bein' spotted like a leopard with
bruises by rason of him havin' to comb the mascot's silky hair twice daily,
and the quick temper of the baste at the tangles.

The long of a summer the billy stops up at the Castle, archin' his neck at
the wurrld and growin' prouder and prouder by dint of the standin' he had
with the owld rigiment and the high-feedin' he had from Herself. Faith,
'tis a great delight we servints had of him I'm tellin' ye! It was as much
as your life's blood was worth to cross his path in the garden, and if the
domestic maids would be meetin' him in the house they'd let him eat the
dresses off them before they dare say a word.