“Indeed I think so myself, Hycy, for where else would you get them?  You have the M’Swiggin nose; an’ it can’t be from any one else you take your high notions.  All you show of the gentleman, Hycy, it’s not hard to name them you have it from, I believe.”

“Spoken like a Sybil.  Mother, within the whole range of my female acquaintances I don’t know a woman that has in her so much of the gentleman as yourself—­my word and honor, mother.”

“Behave, Hycy—­behave now,” she replied, simpering; “however truth’s truth, at any rate.”

We need scarcely say that the poor mendicant was delighted at the notion of having his daughter placed in the family of so warm and independent a man as Jemmy Burke.  Yet the poor little fellow did not separate from the girl without a strong manifestation of the affection he bore her.  She was his only child—­the humble but solitary flower that blossomed for him upon the desert of life.

“I lave her wid you,” he said, addressing Mrs. Burke with tears in his eyes, “as the only treasure an’ happiness I have in this world.  She is the poor man’s lamb, as I have hard read out of Scripture wanst; an’ in lavin’ her undher your care, I lave all my little hopes in this world wid her.  I trust, ma’am, you’ll guard her an’ look afther her as if she was one of your own.”

This unlucky allusion might have broken up the whole contemplated arrangement, had not Hycy stepped in to avert from Peety the offended pride of the patroness.

“I hope, Peety,” he said, “that you are fully sensible of the honor Mrs. Burke does you and your daughter by taking the girl under her protection and patronage?”

“I am, God knows.”

“And of the advantage it is to get her near so respectable a woman—­so highly respectable a woman?”

“I am, in troth.”

“And that it may be the making of your daughter’s fortune?”

“It may, indeed, Masther Hycy.”

“And that there’s no other woman of high respectability in the parish capable of elevating her to the true principles of double and simple proportion?”

“No, in throth, sir, I don’t think there is.”

“Nor that can teach her the newest theories in dogmatic theology and metaphysics, together with the whole system of Algebraic Equations if the girl should require them?”

“Divil another woman in the barony can match her at them by all accounts,” replied Peety, catching the earnest enthusiasm of Hycy’s manner.

“That will do, Peety; you see yourself, mother,” he added, taking her aside and speaking in a low voice, “that the little fellow knows right well the advantages of having her under your care and protection; and it’s very much to his credit, and speaks very highly for his metempsychosis that he does so—­hem!”

“He was always a daicent, sinsible, poor creature of his kind,” replied his mother “besides, Hycy, between you and me, she’ll be more than worth her bit.”