ne here. You know of old, Ned, how she lost her
conscience one night, about ten years ago; and the poor woman, although
she put it in the 'Hue and Cry,' by way of novelty, never got it since.
None of the officers of justice knew of such a commodity; _ergo_, Ned, I
suffer."

Here Mr. Ambrose winked at Ned, and touched his breeches pocket
significantly, as much as to say, "the bribe is where you know."

Ned, however, was strictly impartial, and declined, with most
commendable virtue, to recognize the signal, until he saw whether Mrs.
Mulroony did not understand "generosity" as well as Mr. Gray.

"Misther Gray, I'll thank you to button your lip, if you plaise. It's
all very right, I suppose; but in the manetime let daicent Mrs. Mulroony
tell her own story. How is it, ma'am?"

"Faith, plain enough," she replied; "he came in about half past five
o'clock, with three or four skips from college--"

"Scamps, Mrs. Mulroony. Be just, be correct, ma'am. We were all
gentlemen scamps, Ned, from college. Everybody knows that a college
scamp is a respectable character, especially if he be a divinity
student, a class whom we are proud to place at our head. You are now
corrected, Mrs. Mulroony--proceed."

"Well; he tould me to get a dinner for five; but first asked to see what
he called 'the bill of hair.'"

"In your hands it is anything but a bill of rights, Mrs. Mulroony."

"I tould him not to trouble himself; that my dinner was as good as
another's, which I thought might satisfy him; but instead o' that, he
had the assurance to ask me if I could give them hair soup. I knew very
well what the skip was at."

"Scamp, ma'am, and you will oblige me."

"For if grief for poor Andy (weeping), that suffered mainly for what he
was as innocent of as the unborn child--if grief, an' every one knows
it makes the hair to fall; an' afther all it's only a bit of a front I'm
wearin';--ah, you villain, it was an ill-hearted cut, that."

"It wasn't a cut did it, Mrs. Mulroony; it fell off naturally, and by
instalments--or rather it was a cut, and that was what made you feel it;
that youthful old gentleman, Time, gave it a touch with a certain scythe
he carries. No such croppy as old Time, Mrs. Mulroony." On concluding,
he winked again at old Ned, and touched his pocket as before.

"Mr. Amby, be quiet," said Ned, rather complacently though, "an' let
daicent Mrs. Mulroony go on."

"'Well, then,' says he, 'if you haven't, 'hair-soup,' which w