--Are your turf wet or dry? was, consequently, a pass-
word.
"Not vary dhry," replied Ted, with a grin so wide that, as was
humorously said by a neighbor of his, "it would take a telescope to
enable a man to see from the one end of it to the other."
Hycy nodded and laughed, and Ted, cracking his whip, proceeded up the
town to sell his turf.
Hycy now sauntered about through the market, chatting here and there
among acquaintances, with the air of a man to whom neither life nor
anything connected with it could occasion any earthly trouble. Indeed,
it mattered little what he felt, his easiness of manner was such that
not one of his acquaintances could for a moment impute to him the
possibility of ever being weighed down by trouble or care of any kind;
and lest his natural elasticity of spirits might fail to sustain this
perpetual buoyancy, he by no means neglected to fortify himself with
artificial support. Meet him when or where you might, be it at six
in the morning or twelve at night, you were certain to catch from his
breath the smell of liquor, either in its naked simplicity or disguised
and modified in some shape.
His ride home, though a rapid, was by no means a pleasing one. M'Mahon
had not only refused to lend him the money he stood in need of, but
actually quarrelled with him, as far as he could judge, for no other
purpose but that he might make the quarrel a plea for refusing him.
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