"
"Shiss, to be sure, Kate," he replied, handing her a large clasp knife
with a frightful blade; "an', Kate, whisper, woman alive--you're bought
up, I see."
"How is that, you red rascal?"
"Bekaise, don't I see dat de purchaser has set his mark upon ye?--hee!
hee! hee!" and he pointed to her eye* as he spoke.
* A black eye is said to be the devil's mark.
"No," she replied, nodding towards her husband, "that's his handy work;
an' ye divil's clip!" she added, turning to Teddy, "who has a betther
right?"
She then bled the geese, and, looking about her, asked--
"Have you any wet hay or straw in the place?"
"Ay, plenty of bote," replied Teddy; "an' here's de greeshavigh ready."
She then wrapped the geese, feathers and all, separately in a covering
of wet hay, which she bound round them with thumb-ropes of the same
material, and clearing away a space among the burning ashes, placed each
of them in it, and covered them up closely.
"Now," said she, "put down a pot o' praities, and we won't go to bed
fastin'."
The different groups had now melted into one party, much upon the same
principle that the various little streamlets on the mountains around
them all run, when swollen by a sudden storm, into some larger torrent
equally precipitous and turbulent. Keenan, who was one of those
pertinacious fellows that are equally quarrelsome and hospitable when in
liquor, now resumed the debate with a characteristic impression of the
pugilistic superiority of his family:--
"I am right, I say: I remember it well, for although I wasn't there
myself, my father was, an' I often h'ard him say--God rest his
sowl!"--here he reverently took off his hat and looked upwards--"I often
h'ard him say that Paddy Keenan gave Mullin the first knock-down blow,
an' Pether--I mane no disrespect, but far from it--give us your hand,
man alive--you're going to be married upon my shisther to-morrow,
plaise God!--masther, you'll come, remimber? you'll be as welcome as the
flowers o' May, masther--so, Pether, as I was sayin'--I mane no offince
nor disrespect to you or yours, for you are, an' ever was, a daisent
family, an' well able to fight your corner when it came upon you--but
still, Pether--an' for all that--I say it--an' I'll stand to it--I'll
stand it--that's the chat!--that, man for man, there never was one
o' your seed, breed, or generation able to fight a Keenan--that's the
chat!--here's luck!
"'Oh, 'twas in the month of May,
When the lambkins sport and play,
As I walked out to gain raycrayation,
I espied a comely maid.
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