ying
line: the cakes are particularly good.'

'They're what them French fellers call "galettes,"' observed Nimrod,
biting one. 'Flour an' water, baked in the ashes. Turnpike bread is
better--what the ole gall makes to hum.'

Be it remarked that this periphrasis indicated his mother; and that the
bread he alluded to is made with a species of leaven.

'So ye _ate_ turnpikes too,' remarked Andy, obliquely glancing at the
speaker. 'The English language isn't much help to a man in this
counthry, where everythin' manes somethin' else. Well, Misther Arthur,
about the trout; you remimber I went down to the "Corner" this mornin'.
Now it's been on my mind some days back, that ye'd want a few shirts
washed.'

'But what has that to do with the trout'--interrupted Arthur, laughing.

'Whisht awhile, an' you'll hear. I didn't know how to set about it, no
more than the child of a month old; for there's an art in it, of coorse,
like in everythin' else; an' one time I thried to whiten a shirt of my
own--beggin' yer honours' pardon for mintionin' the article--it kem out
of the pot blacker than it wint in. So sez I to meself, "I'll look out
for the clanest house, an' I'll ax the good woman to tache me how to
wash a thing;" an' I walks along from the store to a nate little cabin
back from the river, that had flowers growin' in the front; an' sure
enough, the floor was as clane as a dhrawin' room, an' a dacent tidy
little woman kneadin' a cake on the table. "Ma'am," sez I, "I'm obliged
to turn washerwoman, an' I don't know how;" but she only curtseyed, and
said somethin' in a furrin tongue.'

'A French Canadian, I suppose,' said Mr. Wynn.

'Jackey Dubois lives in the log-hut with the flowers,' observed Nim, who
was whittling again by way of desert.

'May be so; but at all events she was as like as two peas to the girl
whose weddin' I was at since I came ashore. "Ma'am," sez I, "I want to
larn to be a washerwoman:" and wid that I took off my neckerchief an'
rubbed it, to show what I meant, by the rule of thumb. "Ah, to vash,"
sez she, smilin' like a leathercoat potato. So, afther that, she took my
handkercher and washed it fornent me out; an' I'd watched before how she
med the cakes, an' cleared a little space by the fire to bake 'em, an'
covered them up wid hot ashes.'

'Not a word about the trout,' said Arthur.

'How can I tell everything intirely all at wanst?' replied the Irishman,
with an injured tone. 'Sure I was comin' to t