efore he came to
an old-clothes cart, where the proprietress, being hot and cross, took
him aback by replying: "And who ever heard tell of sellin' ribbons be
the len'th, you quare-lookin' stookawn?"

"Sure it's meself couldn't say but you might; I niver had any call to be
buyin' such a thing before. But a bit that one shillin' 'ud be the
price of is what I'm wishful to be gettin', if it was yella--and beggin'
your pardon, ma'am," Hugh answered with a glib meekness, which mollified
the old woman as much as his not undesigned mention of his shilling.

So she said, "'Deed, now, I believe I've a splindid yella bit
somewheres, a trifle creased in the folds, that I could make you a
prisint of for a shillin'." And she rummaged, and unrolled before him
interminable coils of vivid dandelion-hued ribbon. "The grand colour of
it couldn't be bet," she said, "in Ireland. You could see it a mile off,
and you wouldn't get the match of it in Dublin under half-a-crown. If
she wouldn't be plased wid that, you've got an odd one to satisfy."

Ody with Rory came by as she was wrapping it up in paper, and Hugh,
pointing to his purchase with a melancholy air, said, in an aggrieved
tone: "It's a _terrible_ quantity they're about givin' me--yards and
yards--enough to rope round a haystack; and it's an ojis colour. Troth,
now, if she takes the notion to be stickin' the whole of it on top of
the little black head of her, it's an objec' she'll make of herself, she
will so. It's a pity. I'd liefer there hadn't been the half of it."

"What for then are you gettin' more than enough of whatever it is?" Ody
asked not unreasonably. "Supposin' you wanted any such thrash at all at
all."

"Ah, sure, I settled in me own mind to be spendin' me shillin' on it,
and that's the way it is," Hugh said resignedly. "Maybe she'll have more
wit, the bit of a crathur; she might never put it on. So now I've on'y
to see after Paddy Ryan's rapin'-hook, and then I'm done. And is it
carryin' them two bags all the way home you'd be? Sure there's plinty of
room for them on the baste."

"Ay, is there?" said Ody. "But the fac' is Rory's in none too good a
temper this minyit, goodness help him, and he'll be apt to thravel more
contint, the crathur, if he sees he's not the on'y body wid a loadin'."

"Rax me over the one of them," said Hugh, "I've nought barrin' the bit
of ribbon, and the rapin'-hook 'ill be nothin' to me at all."

And in this way they plodded back to Lisc