is appearance.

"An' I'll go bail you had," answered Cauth, "an' when do you ever go
asleep without having one dhrame or another, that pesters me off o' my
legs the livelong day, till the night falls again to let you have
another? Musha, Jer, don't be ever an' always such a fool; an' never
mind the dhrame now, but lend a hand to help me in the work o' the
house. See the pewther there: haive it up, man alive, an' take it out
into the garden, and sit on the big stone in the sun, an' make it look
as well as you can, afther the ill usage it got last night; come, hurry,
Jer--go an' do what I bid you."

He retired in silence to "the garden," a little patch of ground
luxuriant in potatoes and a few cabbages. Mrs. Mulcahy pursued her work
till her own sensations warned her that it was time to prepare her
husband's morning or rather day meal; for by the height of the sun it
should now be many hours past noon. So she put down her pot of potatoes;
and when they were boiled, took out a wooden trencher full of them, and
a mug of sour milk, to Jer, determined not to summon him from his useful
occupation of restoring the pints and quarts to something of their
former shape.

Stepping through the back door, and getting him in view, she stopped
short in silent anger. His back was turned to her, because of the sun;
and while the vessels, huddled about in confusion, seemed little the
better of his latent skill and industry, there he sat on his favorite
round stone, studiously perusing, half aloud to himself, some idle
volume which doubtless he had smuggled into the garden in his pocket.
Laying down her trencher and her mug, Mrs. Mulcahy stole forward on
tiptoe, gained his shoulder without being heard, snatched the imperfect
bundle of soiled pages out of his hand, and hurled it into a neighbor's
cabbage-bed.

Jeremiah complained, in his usual half-crying tone, declaring that "she
never could let him alone, so she couldn't, and he would rather list for
a soger than lade such a life, from year's end to year's end, so
he would."

"Well, an' do then--an' whistle that idle cur off wid you," pointing to
a nondescript puppy, which had lain happily coiled up at his master's
feet until Mrs. Mulcahy's appearance, but that now watched her closely,
his ears half cocked and his eyes wide open, though his position
remained unaltered. "Go along to the divil, you lazy whelp you!"--she
took up a pint in which a few drops of beer remained since the pre