Such was Mary Sullivan, as she sat at her own hearth, quite alone, engaged as we have represented her.  What she may have been meditating on we cannot pretend to ascertain; but after some time, she looked sharply into the “backstone,” or hob, with an air of anxiety and alarm.  By and by she suspended her knitting, and listened with much earnestness, leaning her right ear over to the hob, from whence the sounds to which she paid such deep attention proceeded.  At length she crossed herself devoutly, and exclaimed, “Queen of saints about us!—­is it back ye are?  Well sure there’s no use in talkin’, bekase they say you know what’s said of you, or to you—­an’ we may as well spake yez fair.—­Hem—­musha, yez are welcome back, crickets, avourneenee!  I hope that, not like the last visit ye ped us, yez are comin’ for luck now!  Moolyeen (* a cow without horns) died, any way, soon afther your other kailyee, (* short visit) ye crathurs ye.  Here’s the bread, an’ the salt, an’ the male for yez, an’ we wish ye well.  Eh?—­saints above, if it isn’t listenin’ they are jist like a Christhien!  Wurrah, but ye are the wise an’ the quare crathurs all out!”

She then shook a little holy water over the hob, and muttered to herself an Irish charm or prayer against the evils which crickets are often supposed by the peasantry to bring with them, and requested, still in the words of the charm, that their presence might, on that occasion, rather be a presage of good fortune to man and beast belonging to her.

“There now, ye dhonans (* a diminuitive, delicate little thing) ye, sure ye can’t say that ye’re ill-thrated here, anyhow, or ever was mocked or made game of in the same family.  You have got your hansel, an’ full an’ plenty of it; hopin’ at the same time that you’ll have no rason in life to cut our best clothes from revinge.  Sure an’ I didn’t desarve to have my brave stuff long body (* an old-fashioned Irish gown) riddled the way it was, the last time ye wor here, an’ only bekase little Barny, that has but the sinse of a gorsoon, tould yez in a joke to pack off wid yourself somewhere else.  Musha, never heed what the likes of him says; sure he’s but a caudy, (* little boy) that doesn’t mane ill, only the bit o’ divarsion wid yez.”

She then resumed her knitting, occasionally stopping, as she changed her needles, to listen, with her ear set, as if she wished to augur from the nature of their chirping, whether they came for good or for evil.  This, however, seemed to be beyond her faculty of translating their language; for—­after sagely shaking her head two or three times, she knit more busily than before.*