llycrazy, in the barony of Quarther
Clift--arrah, what's this your name is, avourneen?"

"Alley Mahon I was christened," replied her new friend; "but," she
added, with an air of modest dignity that was inimitable in its way--"in
regard of my place as maid of honor to Lady Lucy, I'm usually called
Miss Mahon, or Miss Alley. My mistress, for her own sake, in ordher to
keep up her consequence, you persave, doesn't like to hear me called
anything else than either one or t'other of them."

"And it's all right," replied the other. "Well, as I was going to say,
that Mrs. Mainwaring is breakin' her heart about this unforthunate
marriage of her daughter to Scareman. It seems--but this is between
ourselves--it seems, my dear, that he's a dark, hard-hearted scrub,
that 'id go to hell or farther for a shillin', for a penny, ay, or for
a farden. An' the servant that was here afore me--a clean, good-natured
girl she was, in throth--an' got married to a blacksmith, at the
cross-roads beyant--tould me that the scrames, an' yells, an' howlins,
and roarins--the cursin' and blasphaymin'--an' the laughin', that she
said was worse than all--an' the rattlin' of chains--the Lord save
us--would make one think themselves more in hell than in any place upon
this world. And it appears the villain takes delight in it, an' makes
lashins of money by the trade."

"The sorra give him good of it!" exclaimed Alley; "an' I can tell you,
it's Lady Lucy--(divil may care, thought she--I'll make a lady of her
at any rate--this ignorant creature doesn't know the differ) it's Lady
Lucy, I say, that will be sorry to hear of this same marriage--for you
must know--what's this your name is?"

"Nancy Gallaher, dear."

"And were you ever married, Nancy?"

"If I wasn't the fau't was my own, ahagur! but I'll tell you more about
that some day. No, then, I was not, thank God!"

"Thank God! Well, throth, it's a quare thing to thank God for that,
at any rate." This, of course, was parenthetical. "Well, my dear,"
proceeded Alley, "you must know that Mrs. Scareman before her
marriage--of course, she was then Miss Norton--acted in the kippacity of
tutherer general to Lady Lucy, except durin' three months that she was
ill, and had to go to England to thry the wathers."

"What wathers?" asked Nancy. "Haven't we plenty o' wather, an' as good as
they have, at home?"

"Not at all," replied Alley, who sometimes, as the reader may have
perceived, drew upon an imagination