“Or a speech,” cried Forsyth.

“A spaitch is it?” said O’Connor, with a look of deep modesty.  “Sure, I never made a spaitch in me life, except when I axed Mrs. O’Connor to marry me, an’ I never finished that spaitch, for I only got the length of ‘Och! darlint’, when she cut me short in the middle with ‘Sure, you may have me, Ned, and welcome!’”

“Shame, shame!” said Dove, “to say that of your wife.”

“Shame to yersilf,” cried O’Connor indignantly.  “Ain’t I payin’ the good woman a compliment, when I say that she had pity on me bashfulness, and came to me help when I was in difficulty?”

“Quite right, O’Connor; but let’s have a song if you won’t speak.”

“Would ye thank a cracked tay-kittle for a song?” said Ned.

“Certainly not,” replied Peter Logan, who was apt to take things too literally.

“Then don’t ax me for wan,” said the Irishman, “but I’ll do this for ye, messmates:  I’ll read ye the last letter I got from the mistress, just to show ye that her price is beyond all calkerlation.”

A round of applause followed this offer, as Ned drew forth a much-soiled letter from the breast pocket of his coat, and carefully unfolding it, spread it on his knee.

“It begins,” said O’Connor, in a slightly hesitating tone, “with some expressions of a—­a—­raither endearin’ character, that perhaps I may as well pass.”

“No, no,” shouted the men, “let’s have them all.  Out with them, Paddy!”

“Well, well, av ye will have them, here they be.

“’GALWAY.

“‘My own purty darlin’ as has bin my most luved sin’ the day we wos marrit, you’ll be grieved to larn that the pig’s gone to its long home,’”

Here O’Connor paused to make some parenthetical remarks, with which, indeed, he interlarded the whole letter.

“The pig, you must know, lads, was an old sow as belonged to me wife’s gran’-mother, an’ besides bein’ a sort o’ pet o’ the family, was an uncommon profitable crature.  But to purceed.  She goes on to say,—­

“‘We waked her’ (that’s the pig, boys) ’yisterday, and buried her this mornin’.  Big Rory, the baist, was for aitin’ her, but I wouldn’t hear of it; so she’s at rest, an’ so is old Molly Mallone.  She wint away just two minutes be the clock before the pig, and wos burried the day afther.  There’s no more news as I knows of in the parish, except that your old flame Mary got married to Teddy O’Rook, an’ they’ve been fightin’ tooth an’ nail ever since, as I towld ye they would long ago.  No man could live wid that woman.  But the schoolmaster, good man, has let me off the cow.  Ye see, darlin’, I towld him ye wos buildin’ a palace in the say, to put ships in afther they wos wrecked on the coast of Ameriky, so ye couldn’t be expected to send home much money at prisint.  An’ he just said, ’Well, well, Kathleen, you may just kaip the cow, and pay me whin ye can’.  So put that off yer mind, my swait Ned.