Peter served his master as a kind of superintendent in such places, until he gained the full knowledge of distilling, according to the processes used by the most popular adepts in the art.  Having acquired this, he set up as a professor, and had excellent business.  In the meantime, he had put together by degrees a small purse of money, to the amount of about twenty guineas—­no inconsiderable sum for a young Irishman who intends to begin the world on his own account.  He accordingly married, and, as the influence of a wife is usually not to be controlled during the honey-moon, Mrs. Connell prevailed on Peter to relinquish his trade of distiller, and to embrace some other mode of life that might not render their living so much asunder necessary.  Peter suffered himself to be prevailed upon, and promised to have nothing more to do with private distillation, as a distiller.  One of the greatest curses attending this lawless business, is the idle and irregular habit of life which it gradually induces.  Peter could not now relish the labor of an agriculturist, to which he had been bred, and yet he was too prudent to sit down and draw his own and his wife’s support from so exhaustible a source as twenty guineas.  Two or three days passed, during which “he cudgelled his brains,” to use his own expression, in plans for future subsistence; two or three consultations were held with Ellish, in which their heads were laid together, and, as it was still the honey-moon, the subject-matter of the consultation, of course, was completely forgotten.  Before the expiration of a second month, however, they were able to think of many other things, in addition to the fondlings and endearments of a new-married couple.  Peter was every day becoming more his own man, and Ellish by degrees more her own woman.  “The purple light of love,” which had changed Peter’s red head into a rich auburn, and his swivel eye into a knowing wink, exceedingly irresistible in his bachelorship, as he made her believe, to the country girls, had passed away, taking the aforesaid auburn along with it and leaving nothing but the genuine carrot behind.  Peter, too, on opening his eyes one morning about the beginning of the third month, perceived that his wife was, after all, nothing more than a thumping red-cheeked wench, with good eyes, a mouth rather large, and a nose very much resembling, in its curve, the seat of a saddle, allowing the top to correspond with the pummel.

“Pether,” said she, “it’s like a dhrame to me that you’re neglectin’ your business, alanna.”

“Is it you, beauty? but, maybe, you’d first point out to me what business, barrin’ buttherin’ up yourself, I have to mind, you phanix bright?”

“Quit yourself, Pether! it’s time for you to give up your ould ways; you caught one bird wid them, an’ that’s enough.  What do you intind to do!  It’s full time for you to be lookin’ about you.”

“Lookin’ about me!  What do you mane Ellish?”