the beginnin' of nothin'?" pursued Thady.

"Dunno," said Peter, indifferently, "unless it was more nothin'."

"Sure not at all; that wouldn't be the way of it," Johanna said,
dreamily, yet with decision. "If there was nothin' but nothin' in it,
there'd ha' been apt to not be e'er an anythin' ever. Where'd it ha'
come from? Don't be tellin' the child lies, Peter. Why, for one thing,"
she said, her tone sharpening polemically and taking a touch of triumph,
"there was always God Almighty in it, and the Divil. Maybe that's what
you call nothin'."

Peter evaded this point, saying, "Well, anyway, those times, if there
was just the two of them in it, and no harm to be doin', let alone any
good people to know the differ, it's on'y a quare sort of Divil he'd
get the chance of bein'. I wouldn't call him anythin' _much_."

"He wouldn't be so very long, you may depind," Johanna pronounced.
"Musha, sure the Divil couldn't stay contint anywhile at all till he'd
take to some manner of ould mischief 'ud soon show you the sort of
crathur he was--it's his nathur. I should suppose the first thing he'd
go do 'ud be makin' all the sorts of hijjis roarin' great bastes and
snakes and riptiles that he could think of, and the disolit black wet
bogs wid the could win' over them fit to cut you in two when you're
sleepin' out at night," said Johanna, whose ten years of life had
brought her into some rough places before her adoption by her Aunt
Lizzie Ryan, "and the workhouses--bad luck to the whole of them--where
there's rats in the cocoa, and mad people frightenin' you, and the cross
matrons, and the polis, and the say to dhrownd the fishin'-boats in, and
dirty ould naygurs that put dacint people out of their little
places----"

"If it had been me," said Peter, "I'd ha' been very apt to just hit him
a crack on the head when I noticed what he was at, and bid him lave thim
sort of consthructions alone."

"I dunno the rights of it entirely," Johanna admitted, "but it's a
cruel pity he ever got the chance to be carryin' on the way he's done."

"Ah, sure it can't be helped now at all events," said Peter, who was for
the time being not inclined to quarrel seriously with the scheme of
things, as he basked on the warm grassy bank, where the wild bees were
humming in the thyme, happily remote from the grim House and the hungry
sea.

"Belike it can't," said Johanna; "but 'twould be real grand if it could.
Suppose I was out on the hill there some f