y. "Sure, I
never made a spaitch in me life, except when I axed Mrs O'Connor to
marry me, an' I never finished that spaitch, for I only got the length
of `Och! darlint,' when she cut me short in the middle with `Sure, you
may have me, Ned, and welcome!'"

"Shame, shame!" said Dove, "to say that of your wife."

"Shame to yersilf," cried O'Connor indignantly. "Ain't I payin' the
good woman a compliment, when I say that she had pity on me bashfulness,
and came to me help when I was in difficulty?"

"Quite right, O'Connor; but let's have a song if you won't speak."

"Would ye thank a cracked tay-kittle for a song?" said Ned. "Certainly
not," replied Peter Logan, who was apt to take things too literally.

"Then don't ax _me_ for wan," said the Irishman, "but I'll do this for
ye, messmates: I'll read ye the last letter I got from the mistress,
just to show ye that her price is beyond all calkerlation."

A round of applause followed this offer, as Ned drew forth a much-soiled
letter from the breast pocket of his coat, and carefully unfolding it,
spread it on his knee.

"It begins," said O'Connor, in a slightly hesitating tone, "with some
expressions of a--a--raither endearin' charackter, that perhaps I may as
well pass."

"No, no," shouted the men, "let's have them all. Out with them, Paddy!"

"Well, well, av ye _will_ have them, here they be.

"`GALWAY.

"`My own purty darlin' as has bin my most luved sin' the day we wos
marrit, you'll be grieved to larn that the pig's gone to its long
home.'"

Here O'Connor paused to make some parenthetical remarks with which,
indeed, he interlarded the whole letter.

"The pig, you must know, lads, was an old sow as belonged to me wife's
gran'-mother, an' besides bein' a sort o' pet o' the family, was an
uncommon profitable crature. But to purceed. She goes on to say,--`We
waked her' (that's the pig, boys) `yisterday, and buried her this
mornin'. Big Rory, the baist, was for aitin' her, but I wouldn't hear
of it; so she's at rest, an' so is old Molly Mallone. She wint away
just two minutes be the clock before the pig, and wos buried the day
afther. There's no more news as I knows of in the parish, except that
your old flame Mary got married to Teddy O'Rook, an' they've been
fightin' tooth an' nail ever since, as I towld ye they would long ago.
No man could live wid that woman. But the schoolmaster, good man, has
let me off the cow. Ye see, darlin', I towld him ye w