Art, having received the half-crown and the letter, appeared delighted; but, on hearing the name of the person to whom it was addressed, he smelt a trick.  He promised faithfully, however, to deliver it, and betrayed no symptoms whatever of suspicion.  After getting some distance from the big house, he set his wits to work, and ran over in his mind the names of those who had been most in the habit of annoying him.  At the head of this list stood Phelim O’Toole, and on Phelim’s head did he resolve to transfer the revenge which the Squire, he had no doubt, intended to take on himself.

With considerable speed he made way to Larry O’Toole’s, where such a scene presented itself as made him for a moment forget the immediate purport of his visit.

Opposite Phelim, dressed out in her best finery, stood the housekeeper, zealously insisting’ on either money or marriage.  On one side of him stood old Donovan and his daughter, whom he had forced to come, in the character of a witness, to support his charges against the gay deceiver.  On the other were ranged Sally Flattery, in tears, and her uncle in wrath, each ready to pounce upon Phelim.

Phelim stood the very emblem of patience and good-humor.  When one of them attacked him, he winked at the other two when either of the other two came on, he Winked still at those who took breath.  Sometimes he trod on his father’s toe, lest the old fellow might lose the joke, and not unfrequently proposed their going to a public-house, and composing their differences over a bottle, if any of them would pay the expenses.

“What do you mane to do?” said the housekeeper; “but it’s asy known I’m an unprojected woman, or I wouldn’t be thrated as I am.  If I had relations livin’ or near me, we’d pay you on the bones for bringin’ me to shame and scandal, as you have done.”

“Upon my sanies, Mrs. Doran, I feel for your situation, so I do,” said Phelim.  You’ve outlived all your friends, an’ if it was in my power to bring any o’ them back to you I’d do it.”

“Oh, you desaver, is that the feelin’ you have for me, when I thought you’d be a guard an’ a projection to me?  You know I have the money, you sconce, an’ how comfortable it ’ud keep us, if you’d only see what’s good for you.  You blarnied an’ palavered me, you villain, till you gained my infections an’ thin you tuck the cholic as an excuse to lave me in a state of dissolution an’ disparagement.  You promised to marry me, an’ you had no notion of it.”

“You’re not the only one he has disgraced, Mrs. Doran,” said Donovan.  “A purty way he came down, himself an’ his father, undher pretence of coortin’ my daughter.  He should lay down his ten guineas, too, to show us what he had to begin the world wid, the villain!—­an’ him had no notion of it aither.”

“An’ he should send this girl to make me go to the priest to have him and her called, the reprobate,” said Nick Flattery; “an’ him had no notion of it aither.”