-she's no other
than--hem--divil a one else than Father O'Hara's housekeeper, ould Biddy
Doran!"

The mirth of the old couple was excessive. The father laughed till he
fell off his stool, and the mother till the tears ran down her cheeks.

"Death alive; ould man! but you're very merry," said Phelim. "If you wor
my age, an' in such an' amplush, you'd laugh on the wrong side o' your
mouth. Maybe you'll tarn your tune when you hear that she has a hundhre
and twenty guineas."

"An' you'll be rich, too," said the father. "The sprig an' you will be
rich!--ha, ha, ha!"

"An' the family they'll have!" said the mother, in convulsions.

"Why, in regard o' that," said Phelim, rather nettled, "if all fails us,
sure we can do as my father and you did: kiss the Lucky Stone, an' make
a Station."

"Phelim, aroon," said the mother, seriously, "put it out o' your head.
Sure you wouldn't go to bring me a daughter-in-law oulder nor myself?"

"I'd as soon go over," (* be transported) said Phelim; "or swing itself,
before I'd marry sich a piece o' desate. Hard feelin' to her! how she
did me to my face!"

Phelim then entered into a long-visaged detail of the scene at
Father O'Hara's, dwelling bitterly on the alacrity with which the old
housekeeper ensnared him in his own mesh.

"However," he concluded, "she'd be a sharp one if she'd do me
altogether. We're not married yet; an' I've a consate of my own, that
she's done for the ten guineas, any how!"

A family council was immediately held upon Phelim's matrimonial
prospects. On coming close to the speculation of Miss Patterson, it
was somehow voted, notwithstanding Phelim's powers of attraction, to be
rather a discouraging one. Gracey Dalton was also given up. The matter
was now serious, the time short, and Phelim's bounces touching his own
fascinations with the sex in general, were considerably abated. It was
therefore resolved that he ought to avail himself of Sam Appleton's
clothes, until his own could be made. Sam, he said, would not press him
for them immediately, inasmuch as he was under obligations to Phelim's
silence upon some midnight excursions that he had made.

"Not," added Phelim, "but I'm as much, an' maybe more in his power, than
he is in mine."

When breakfast was over, Phelim and the father, after having determined
to "drink a bottle" that night in the family of an humble young woman,
named Donovan, who, they all agreed, would make an excellent wife for
him, res