“I feel that, Hycy, but there’s no help for spilt milk; we must only make the best of a bad bargain.  Are you coming to your breakfast,” she shouted, calling to honest Jemmy, who still sat on the hob ruminating with a kind of placid vexation over his son’s extravagance—­“your tay’s filled out!”

“There let it,” he replied, “I’ll have none of your plash to-day; I tuck my skinful of good stiff stirabout that’s worth a shipload of it.  Drink it yourselves—­I’m no gintleman.”

“Arrah, when did you find that out, Misther Burke?” she shouted back again.

“To his friends and acquaintances it is anything but a recent disco very,” added Hycy; and each complimented the observation of the other with a hearty laugh, during which the object of it went out to the fields to join the men.

“I’m afraid it’s no go, mother,” proceeded the son, when breakfast was finished—­“he won’t stand it.  Ah, if both my parents were of the same geometrical proportion, there would be little difficulty in this business; but upon my honor and reputation, my dear mother, I think between you and me that my father’s a gross abstraction—­a most substantial and ponderous apparition.”

“An’ didn’t I know that an’ say that too all along?” replied his mother, catching as much of the high English from him as she could manage:  “however, lave the enumeration of the mare to me.  It’ll go hard or I’ll get it out of him.”

“It is done,” he replied; “your stratagetic powers are great, my dear mother, consequently it is left in your hands.”

Hycy, whilst in the kitchen, cast his eye several times upon the handsome young daughter of Peety Dhu, a circumstance to which we owe the instance of benevolent patronage now about to be recorded.

“Mother,” he proceeds, “I think it would be a charity to rescue that interesting little girl of Peety Dhu’s from a life of mendicancy.”

“From a what?” she asked, staring at him.

“Why,” he replied, now really anxious to make himself understood—­“from the disgraceful line of life he’s bringin’ her up to.  You should take her in and provide for her.”

“When I do, Hycy,” replied his mother, bridling, “it won’t be a beggar’s daughter nor a niece of Philip Hogan’s—­sorrow bit.”

“As for her being a niece of Hogan’s, you know it is by his mother’s side; but wouldn’t it be a feather in her cap to get under the protection of a highly respectable woman, though?  The patronage of a person like you, Mrs. Burke, would be the making of her—­my word and honor it would.”

“Hem!—­ahem!—­do you think so, Hycy?”

“Tut, mother—­that indeed!—­can there be a doubt about it?”

“Well then, in that case, I think she may stay—­that is, if the father will consent to it.”

“Thank you, mother, for that example of protection and benevolence.  I feel that all my virtues certainly proceed from your side of the house and are derived from yourself—­there can be no doubt of that.”