“Ay! now take to the cryin’, do; rock yourself over the ashes, an’ wipe your eyes wid the corner of your apron; but, I say agin, what’s to become of the half acre?”

“Oh, God forgive you, Larry!  That’s the worst I say to you, you poor half-dead blaguard!”

“Why do you massacray me wid your tongue as you do?”

“Go. an—­go an.  I won’t make you an answer, you atomy!  That’s what I’ll do.  The heavens above turn your heart this day, and give me strinth to bear my throubles an’ heart burnin’, sweet Queen o’ Consolation!  Or take me into the arms of Parodies, sooner nor be as I am, wid a poor baste of a villain, that I never turn my tongue on, barrin’ to tell him the kind of a man he is, the blaguard!”

“You’re betther than you desarve to be!”

To this, Sheelah made no further reply; on the contrary, she sat smoking her pipe with a significant silence, that was only broken by an occasional groan, an ejaculation, or a singularly devout upturning of the eyes to heaven, accompanied by a shake of the head, at once condemnatory and philosophical; indicative of her dissent from what he said, as well as of her patience in bearing it.

Larry, however, usually proceeded to combat all her gestures by viva voce argument; for every shake of her head he had an appropriate answer:  but without being able to move her from the obstinate silence she maintained.  Having thus the field to himself, and feeling rather annoyed by the want of an antagonist, he argued on in the same form of dispute, whilst she, after first calming her own spirit by the composing effects of the pipe, usually cut him short with—­

“Here, take a blast o’ this, maybe it’ll settle you.”

This was received in silence.  The good man smoked on, and every puff appeared, as an evaporation of his anger.  In due time he was as placid as herself, drew his breath in a grave composed manner, laid his pipe quietly on the hob, and went about his business as if nothing had occurred between them.

These bickerings were strictly private, with the exception of some disclosures made to Sheelah’s mother and sisters.  Even these were thrown out rather as insinuations that all was not right, than as direct assertions that they lived unhappily.  Before strangers they were perfect turtles.

Larry, according to the notices of his life furnished by Sheelah, was “as good a husband as ever broke the world’s bread;” and Sheelah “was as good a poor man’s wife as ever threw a gown over her shoulders.”  Notwithstanding all this caution, their little quarrels took wind; their unhappiness became known.  Larry, in consequence of a failing he had, was the cause of this.  He happened to be one of those men who can conceal nothing when in a state of intoxication.  Whenever he indulged in liquor too freely, the veil which discretion had drawn over their recriminations was put aside, and a dolorous history of their weaknesses, doubts, hopes, and wishes, most unscrupulously given to every person on whom the complainant could fasten.  When sober, he had no recollection of this, so that many a conversation of cross-purposes took place between him and his neighbors, with reference to the state of his own domestic inquietude, and their want of children.