’Why, Thady, you were telling me yesterday that Sir Condy had sold all entirely to Jason, and where then does all them guineas in the handkerchief come from?’

‘They are the purchase-money of my lady’s jointure,’ says I.

Judy looks a little bit puzzled at this.  ’A penny for your thoughts, Judy,’ says my shister; ‘hark, sure Sir Condy is drinking her health.’

He was at the table in the room [the room—­the principal room in the house], drinking with the excise-man and the gauger, who came up to see his honour, and we were standing over the fire in the kitchen.

‘I don’t much care is he drinking my health or not,’ says Judy; ’and it is not Sir Condy I’m thinking of, with all your jokes, whatever he is of me.’

’Sure you wouldn’t refuse to be my Lady Rackrent, Judy, if you had the offer?’ says I.

‘But if I could do better!’ says she.

‘How better?’ says I and my shister both at once.

‘How better?’ says she.  ’Why, what signifies it to be my Lady Rackrent and no castle?  Sure what good is the car, and no horse to draw it?’

‘And where will ye get the horse, Judy?’ says I.

‘Never mind that,’ says she; ’maybe it is your own son Jason might find that.’

‘Jason!’ says I; ’don’t be trusting to him, Judy.  Sir Condy, as I have good reason to know, spoke well of you when Jason spoke very indifferently of you, Judy.’

‘No matter,’ says Judy; ’it’s often men speak the contrary just to what they think of us.’

‘And you the same way of them, no doubt,’ answered I.  ’Nay, don’t he denying it, Judy, for I think the better of ye for it, and shouldn’t be proud to call ye the daughter of a shister’s son of mine, if I was to hear ye talk ungrateful, and anyway disrespectful of his honour.’

‘What disrespect,’ says she, ’to say I’d rather, if it was my luck, be the wife of another man?’

‘You’ll have no luck, mind my words, Judy,’ says I; and all I remembered about my poor master’s goodness in tossing up for her afore he married at all came across me, and I had a choking in my throat that hindered me to say more.

‘Better luck, anyhow, Thady,’ says she, ’than to be like some folk, following the fortunes of them that have none left.’

Oh!  King of Glory!’ says I, ’hear the pride and ungratitude of her, and he giving his last guineas but a minute ago to her childer, and she with the fine shawl on her he made her a present of but yesterday!’

‘Oh, troth, Judy, you’re wrong now,’ says my shister, looking at the shawl.

‘And was not he wrong yesterday, then,’ says she, ’to be telling me I was greatly altered, to affront me?’

‘But, Judy,’ says I, ’what is it brings you here then at all in the mind you are in; is it to make Jason think the better of you?’

‘I’ll tell you no more of my secrets, Thady,’ says she, ’nor would have told you this much, had I taken you for such an unnatural fader as I find you are, not to wish your own son prefarred to another.’