place: and this also is frequently the case with the nearest door
neighbors. There is generally a solemn hospitality observed on the
occasion, of which the two classes I mention partake. Sally's absence,
therefore, on that night, or for the greater portion of the next day,
excited neither alarm nor surprise at home. On entering their miserable
sheiling, she found her father, who had just returned, and her
step-mother in high words; the cause of which, she soon learned, had
originated in his account of the interview between young Dalton and Mave
Sullivan, together with its unpleasant consequences to himself.

"What else could you expect," said his wife, "but what you got? You're
ever an' always too ready wid your divil's grin an' your black prophecy
to thim you don't like. I wondher you're not afeard that some of them
might come back to yourself, an' fall upon your own head. If ever a man
tempted Providence you do."

"Ah, dear me!" he exclaimed, with a derisive sneer, rendered doubly
repulsive by his own hideous and disfigured face, "how pious we are!
Providence, indeed! Much I care about Providence, you hardened jade, or
you aither, whatever puts the word into your purty mouth. Providence!
oh, how much we regard it, as if Providence took heed of what we do.
Go an' get me somethin' to put to this swellin', you had betther; or
if it's goin' to grow religious you are, be off out o' this; we'll have
none of your cant or pishthrougues here."

"What's this?" inquired Sarah, seating; herself on a three legged stool,
"the ould work, is it? bell-cat, bell-dog. Ah, you're a blessed pair an'
a purty pair, too; you, wid your swelled face an' blinkin' eye. Arrah,
what dacent man gave you that? An' you," she added, turning to her
step-mother, "wid your cheeks poulticed, an' your eye blinkin' on the