cheeks when she smiled, two circumstances which contributed strongly to sustain her good humor, and an unaccountable tendency to laughter, when the poverty of the jest was out of all proportion to the mirth that followed it.  Notwithstanding this apparently light and agreeable spirit, she was both vulgar and arrogant, and labored under the weak and ridiculous ambition of being considered a woman of high pretensions, who had been most unfortunately thrown away, if not altogether lost, upon a husband whom she considered as every way unworthy of her.  Her father had risen into the possession of some unexpected property when it was too late to bestow upon her a suitable education, and the consequence was that, in addition to natural vanity, on the score of beauty, she was a good deal troubled with purse-pride, which, with a foolish susceptibility of flattery, was a leading feature in her disposition.  In addition to this, she was an inveterate and incurable slattern, though a gay and lively one; and we need scarcely say that whatever she did in the shape of benevolence or charity, in most instances owed its origin to the influences of the weaknesses she was known to possess.

Breakfast, at length, was over, and the laborers, with an odd hiccup here and there among them, from sheer repletion, got their hats and began to proceed towards the farm.

“Now, boys,” said Jemmy, after dropping a spittle into his pipe, pressing it down with his little finger, and putting it into his waistcoat pocket, “see an’ get them praties down as soon as you can, an’ don’t work as if you intended to keep your Christmas there; an’ Paddy the Bounce, I’ll thank you to keep your jokes an’ your stories to yourself, an’ not to be idlin’ the rest till afther your work’s done.  Throth it was an unlucky day I had anything to do wid you, you divartin’ vagabone—­ha! ha! ha!  When I hired him in the Micklemas fair,” proceeded Jemmy, without addressing himself to any particular individual, “he killed me wid laughin’ to such a degree, that I couldn’t refuse the mehony whatsomever wages he axed; an’ now he has the men, insteed o’ mindin’ their work, dancin’ through the field, an’ likely to split at the fun he tells them, ha! ha! ha!  Be off, now, boys.  Pettier Murphy, you randletree, let,the girl alone.  That’s it Peggy, lay on him; ha! devil’s cure to you! take what you’ve got any way—­you desarve it.”

These latter observations were occasioned by a romping match that took place between a young laborer and a good-looking girl who was employed to drop potatoes for the men.

At length those who were engaged in the labor of the field departed in a cheerful group, and in a few minutes the noise of a horse’s feet, evidently proceeding at a rapid trot, was heard coming up the boreen or avenue towards the house.

“Ay,” exclaimed Burke, with a sigh, “there comes Hycy at a trot, an’ the wondher is it’s not a gallop.  That’s the way he’ll get through life, I fear; an’ if God doesn’t change him he’s more likely to gallop himself to the Staff an’ Bag (* Beggary.) than to anything else I know.  I can’t nor I won’t stand his extravagance—­but it’s his mother’s fault, an’ she’ll see what it’ll come to in the long run.”