e
sister-in-law was Tishy M'Crum, which seemed simple enough, but the two
light-haired boys were Greens, Mrs. Patman having been a widow, while
the little girl was the child of a wife whom Tom Patman had already
buried; for though he looked full young to have embarked upon matrimony
at all, this was his second venture. "And it's a quare comether she must
ha' been after puttin' on him," quoth Mrs. Quigley, "afore he took up
wid herself, that's as ugly as if she was bespoke, and half a dozen year
oulder than the young bosthoon, if she's a minyit." It is true that at
the time when Mrs. Quigley expressed this unflattering opinion she and
her neighbours had been exasperated by an impolite speech of Mrs.
Patman, who had said loudly in their hearing, "Well, for sartin if I'd
had a notion of the blamed little dog-hole he was bringin' us into,
sorra the sole of a fut 'ud I ha' set inside it;" and had then proceeded
to congratulate herself upon having prudently left "all her dacint bits
of furniture up above at her mother's, so that she needn't be bothered
wid cartin' them away out of a place that didn't look to have had ever
e'er a thing in it worth the throuble of movin', not if it stood there
until it dropped to pieces wid dirt." Mrs. Quigley rejoined (to Judy
Ryan) that "it would be a great pity if any people sted in a place that
wasn't good enough for them, supposin' all the while they was used to
anythin' a thraneen better--maybe they might, in coorse, and maybe they
mightn't. It was won'erful to hear the talk some folks had, and they wid
every ould stick they owned an aisy loadin' for Reilly's little ass."
But Judy Ryan, with a flight of sarcastic fancy, hoped that Mrs. Patman
and her family "were about goin' on a visit prisintly to the Lady
Lifftinant, because it was much if they'd find any place else where
there'd be grandeur accordin' to their high-up notions."

Skirmishes such as this, however, were a symptom rather than a cause of
the Patmans' unpopularity. That sprang from several roots. For one
thing, both the women had harsh, scolding voices, and it was even
chances that if you passed within earshot of their cabin you would hear
them giving tongue. Their objurgations were, as a rule, addressed to the
young man or the old, the latter of whom soon grew into an object of
local compassion as "a harmless, dacint, poor crathur," while his son
came in for the frank-eyed looking-down-upon which is the portion of an
able-bo