“A girsha!” said Peggy, his fellow-servant, feeling the indignity just offered to her sex—­“Why thin, bad manners to your assurance for that same:  a girsha’s as well intitled to a full glass as a gorsoon, any day.”

“Husth a colleen,” said Nogher, good—­humoredly, “sure, it’s takin’ pattern by sich a fine example you ought to be.  This, Mrs. Moan, is the purty crature I was mintionin’ as we came along, that intends to get spanshelled wid myself some o’ these days—­that is, if she can bring me into good-humor, the thief.”

“And if it does happen,” said Peggy, “you’ll have to look sharper afther him, Mrs. Moan.  He’s pleasant enough now, but I’ll be bound no man ’ill know betther how to hang his fiddle behind the door when he comes home to us.”

“Well, acushla, sure he may, if he likes, but if he does, he knows what’s afore him—­not sayin’ that he ever will, I hope, for it’s a woful case whin it comes to that, ahagur.”

“Faix, it’s a happy story for half the poor wives of the parish that you’re in it,” said Peggy, “sure, only fore——­”

“Be dhe huath Vread, agus glak sho—­hould your tongue, Peggy, and taste this,” said the mother of her mistress, handing her a glass:  “If you intend to go together, in the name o’ goodness fear God more than the midwife, if you want to have luck an’ grace.”

“Oh, is it all this?” exclaimed the sly girl; “faix, it ’ill make me hearty if I dhrink so much—­bedeed it will.  Well, misthress, your health, an’ a speedy uprise to you—­an’ the same to the masther, not forgettin’ the sthranger—­long life an’ good health to him.”

She then put the glass to her lips, and after several small sips, appearing to be so many unsuccessful attempts at overcoming her reluctance to drink it, she at length took courage, and bolting it down, immediately applied her apron to her mouth, making at the same time two or three wry faces, gasping, as if to recover the breath which it did not take from her.

The midwife, in the mean time, felt that the advice just given to Nogher and Peggy contained a clause somewhat more detrimental to her importance than was altogether agreeable to her; and to sit calmly under any imputation that involved a diminution of her authority, was not within the code of her practice.

“If they go together,” she observed, “it’s right to fear God, no doubt; but that’s no raison why they shouldn’t pay respect to thim that can sarve thim or otherwise.”

“Nobody says aginst that, Mrs. Moan,” replied the other; “it’s all fair, an’ nothin’ else.”

“A midwife’s nuttin’ in your eyes, we suppose,” rejoined Mrs. Moan; “but maybe’s there’s thim belongin’ to you could tell to the contrary.”

“Oblaged to you, we suppose, for your sarvices—­an’ we’re not denyin’ that, aither.”

“For me sarvices—­maybe thim same sarvices wasn’t very sweet or treaclesome to some o’ thim,” she rejoined, with a mysterious and somewhat indignant toss of the head.