“Why, to tell you the truth, Connor, you have hit me off pretty well.  I’m beginning to get a taste for agriculture.”

“But,” said Connor, scratching his head, “won’t your honor allow us the price of a glass, or a pint o’ portlier, for our hard day’s work.  Bad cess to me, sir, but this meadow ’ill play the puck wid us afore we get it finished.—­Atween ourselves, sir—­if it wouldn’t be takin’ freedoms—­if you’d look to your own farmin’ yourself.  The steward, sir, is a dacent kind of a man; but, sowl, he couldn’t hould a candle to your honor in seein’ to the best way of doin’ a thing, sir.  Won’t you allow us glasses apiece, your honor?  Faix, we’re kilt entirely, so we are.”

“Here is half-a-crown among you, Connor; but don’t get drunk.”

“Dhrunk!  Musha, long may you reign, Sir!  Be the scythe in my hand, I’d rather—­Och, faix, you’re one o’ the ould sort, sir—­the raal Irish gintleman, your honor.  An’ sure your name’s far and near for that, any how.”

Connor’s face would have done the heart of Brooke or Cruikshank good, had either of them seen it charged with humor so rich as that which beamed upon it, when the Major left them to enjoy their own comments upon what had happened.

“Oh, be the livin’ farmer,” said Connor, “are we all alive at all afther doin’ the Major!  Pp., thin, the curse o’ the crows upon you, pijor, darlin’, but you are a Manus!* The damn’ rip o’ the world, that wouldn’t give the breath he breathes to the poor for God’s sake, and he’ll threwn a man half-a-crown that ‘ll blarney him for farmin’, and him doesn’t know the differ atween a Cork-red a Yellow-leg."**

     * A soft booby easily hoaxed.

     **Different kinds of potatoes.

“Faith, he’s the boy that knows how to make a Judy of himself any way, Pether,” exclaimed another.  “The divil a hapurt’h asier nor to give these Quality the bag to hould, so there isn’t.  An’ they think themselves so cute, too!”

“Augh!” said a third, “couldn’t a man find the soft side o’ them as asy as make out the way to’ his own nose, widout being led to it.  Divil a sin it is to do them, any way.  Sure, he thinks we wor tooth an’ nail at the meadow all day; an’ me thought I’d never recover it, to see Pether here—­the rise he tuck out of him!  Ha, ha, ha—­och, och, murdher, oh!”

“Faith,” exclaimed Connor, “’twas good, you see, to help the poor scholar; only for it we couldn’t get shkamin’ the half-crown out of him.  I think we ought to give the crathur half of it, an’ him so sick:  he’ll be wantin’ it worse nor ourselves.”

“Oh, be Gorra, he’s fairly entitled to that.  I vote him fifteen pince.”

“Surely!” they exclaimed unanimously.  “Tundher-an’-turf! wasn’t he the manes of gettin’ it for us?”

“Jemmy, a bouchal,” said Connor, across the ditch to M’Evoy, “are you sleepin’?”

“Sleepin’!  Oh, no,” replied Jemmy; “I’d give the wide world for one wink of asy sleep.”