to slacken his pace, or throw over his shoulder a growl of dissent or
justification.

On getting near home, the neighbors would occasionally pop out their
heads, with a smile of good-humored satire on their faces, which Nancy
was very capable of translating:

"Ay," she would say, addressing them, "I've caught him--here he is to
the fore. Indeed you may well laugh, Kitty Rafferty; not a one of myself
blames you for it.--Ah, ye mane crathur," aside to Ned, "if you had the
blood of a hen in you, you wouldn't have the neighbors braking their
hearts laughing at you in sich a way; and above all the people in the
world, them Rafferty's, that got the decree against us at the last
sessions, although I offered to pay within fifteen shillings of the
differ--the grubs!"

Having seen her hopeful charge safely deposited on the hob, Nancy would
throw her cloak into this corner, and her bonnet into that, with the air
of a woman absorbed by the consideration of some vexatious trial;
she would then sit down, and, lighting her doodeen, (* a short pipe)
exclaim--

"Wurrah, wurrah! but it's me that's the heart-scalded crathur with that
man's four quarters! The Lord may help me and grant me patience with
him, any way!--to have my little honest, hard-earned penny spint among
a pack of vagabonds, that don't care if him and me wor both down the
river, so they could get their skinful of drink out of him! No matther,
agra, things can't long be this a-way; but what does Ned care?--give him
drink and fighting, and his blackguards about him, and that's his glory.
There now's the landlord coming down upon us for the rint; and unless he