This was too much for Jim.  His face broadened into his old smile.

“Mike,” said he, “ye haven’t got an old towel or a hoss blanket about ye, have ye?  I feel as if I was a goin’ to cry.”

“An’ what the divil be ye goin’ to cry for?”

“Well, Mike, this is a world o’ sorrer, an’ when a feller comes to think of a lot o’ women as is so hard pushed that they hanker arter Mike Conlin, it fetches me.  It’s worse nor bein’ without victuals, an’ beats the cholery out o’ sight.”

“Oh, ye blaggard!  Can’t ye talk sinse whin yer betthers is thryin’ to hilp ye?  What kind of an owld woman have ye got, now?”

“Mike,” said Jim, solemnly, “ye don’t know what ye’re talkin’ about.  If ye did, ye wouldn’t call her an old woman.  She’s a lady, Mike.  She isn’t one o’ your kind, an’ I ain’t one o’ your kind, Mike.  Can’t ye see there’s the difference of a pig atween us?  Don’t ye know that if I was to go hazin’ round in the mornin’ without no clo’es to speak on, an’ takin’ comfort in a howlin’ pig, that I shouldn’t be up to keepin’ a hotel?  Don’t be unreasomble; and, Mike, don’t ye never speak to me about my old woman.  That’s a sort o’ thing that won’t set on her.”

Mike shook his head in lofty pity.

“Ah, Jim, I can see what ye’re comin’ to.”

Then, as if afraid that his “owld woman” might overhear his confession, he bent toward Jim, and half whispered: 

“The women is all smarter nor the men, Jim; but ye mustn’t let ’em know that ye think it.  Ye’ve got to call ’em yer owld women, or ye can’t keep ’em where ye want ’em.  Be gorry!  I wouldn’t let me owld woman know what I think of ’er fur fifty dollars.  I couldn’t kape me house over me head inny time at all at all, if I should whishper it.  She’s jist as much of a leddy as there is in Sivenoaks, bedad, an’ I have to put on me big airs, an’ thrash around wid me two hands in me breeches pockets, an’ shtick out me lips like a lorrd, an’ promise to raise the divil wid her whiniver she gits a fit o’ high flyin’, an’ ye’ll have to do the same, Jim, or jist lay down an’ let ’er shtep on ye.  Git a good shtart, Jim.  Don’t ye gin ’er the bit for five minutes.  She’ll rin away wid ye.  Ye can’t till me anything about women.”

“No, nor I don’t want to.  Now you jest shut up, Mike.  I’m tired a hearin’ ye.  This thing about women is one as has half the fun of it in larnin’ it as ye go along.  Ye mean well enough, Mike, but yer eddication is poor; an’ if it’s all the same to ye, I’ll take my pudden straight an’ leave yer sarse for them as likes it.”

Jim’s utter rejection of the further good offices of Mike, in the endeavor to instruct him in the management of his future relations with the little woman, did not sink very deep into the Irishman’s sensibilities.  Indeed, it could not have done so, for their waters were shallow, and, as at this moment Mike’s “owld woman” called both to dinner, the difference was forgotten in the sympathy of hunger and the satisfactions of the table.