“Found you out!  Why, is that the tone you speak in?”

“Faith, sir, thruth’s best.  I wanted her to tell it to you long ago, but she wouldn’t.  Howsomever, it’s still time enough.—­Hem!  The thruth, sir, is, that Mrs. Doran an’ I is goin’ to get the words said as soon as we can; so, sir, wid the help o’ Goodness, I came to see if your Reverence ’ud call us next Sunday wid a blessin’.”

Mrs. Doran had, for at least a dozen round years before this, been in a state-of hopelessness upon the subject of matrimony; nothing in the shape of a proposal having in the course of that period come in her way.  Now we have Addison’s authority for affirming, that an old woman who permits the thoughts of love to get into her head, becomes a very odd kind of animal.  Mrs. Doran, to do her justice, had not thought of it for nearly three lustres, for this reason, that she had so far overcome her vanity as to deem it possible that a proposal could be ever made to her.  It is difficult, however, to know what a day may bring forth.  Here was an offer, dropping like a ripe plum into her mouth.  She turned the matter over in her mind with a quickness equal to that of Phelim himself.  One leading thought struck her forcibly:  if she refused to close with this offer, she would never get another.

“Is it come to this, Mrs. Doran?” inquired the priest.

“Oh, bedad, sir, she knows it is,” replied Phelim, giving her a wink with the safe eye.

Now, Mrs. Doran began to have her suspicions.  The wink she considered as decidedly ominous.  Phelim, she concluded with all the sagacity of a woman thinking upon that subject, had winked at her to assent only for the purpose of getting themselves out of the scrape for the present.  She feared that Phelim would be apt to break off the match, and take some opportunity, before Sunday should arrive, of preventing the priest from calling them.  Her decision, however, was soon made.  She resolved, if possible to pin down Phelim to his own proposal.

“Is this true, Mrs. Doran?” inquired the priest, a second time.

Mrs. Doran could not, with any regard to the delicacy of her sex, give an assent without proper emotion.  She accordingly applied her apron to her eyes, and shed a few natural tears in reply to the affecting query of the pastor.

Phelim, in the meantime, began to feel mystified.  Whether Mrs. Doran’s tears were a proof that she was disposed to take the matter seriously, or whether they were tears of shame and vexation for having been caught in the character of a romping old hoyden, he could not then exactly decide.  He had, however, awful misgivings upon the subject.

“Then,” said the priest, “it is to be understood that I’m to call you both on Sunday.”

“There’s no use in keepin’ it back from you,” replied Mrs. Doran.  “I know it’s foolish of me; but we have all our failins, and to be fond of Phelim there, is mine.  Your Reverence is to call us next Sunday, as Phelim tould you.  I am sure I can’t tell you how he deluded me at all, the desaver o’ the world!”