sick call. 'Deed, and I know myself I
like the part of the business where the cash is."

"In course, Mr. McGrath, I'd go with more sperit, but not a foot
quicker, nor so quick. May be I'd grumble at the one and not at the
other; but what the church tells me, I'll do, if it plazes God to let
me."

"Oh, Cullen, you'd make one think I was admonishing you. A fine
martyr he'd make, wouldn't he, Thady?"

Cullen, who took everything in downright earnest, clasped his dirty
hands, and exclaimed,

"If the church required it, and it was God's will, I hope I would."

"Well, well, but it'll be just at present much more comfortable for
all parties you should square round a little, and take your punch.
Come, Thady, are you going to be a martyr, too? it's a heathenish
kind of penance, though, to be holding your tongue so long. Come, my
boy, you were to bring the ticket about the rent with you."

Thady opened his ears at the word rent, but before he'd time to make
any suitable reply, Judy was moving the things, Father John was
pulling back the table, and pushing Cullen into a corner by the fire.

"Now, Judy, the fire under the pump, you know; out with the
groceries,--see, but have I any sugar, then?"

"Sorrow a bit of lump, but moist and plenty, Father John."

"Well, my boys, you must make your punch with brown sugar for once in
your life; and what's the harm? what we want in sugar, we'll make up
in the whiskey, I'll be bound. Judy, bring the tumblers."

Out came the tumblers--that is, two tumblers, one with a stand, the
other with a flat bottom, and a tea-cup with a spoon in it. The
tea-cup was put opposite Father John's chair, and the reverend father
himself proceeded to pour a tolerable modicum of spirits out of the
stone jar into a good-sized milk jug, and placed it on the table.

"Isn't it queer, then, Thady, I can't get a bottle, or a decanter,
or anything of glass to remain in the house at all? I'm sure I had a
decanter, though I didn't see it these six months."

"And wouldn't it be odd if you did, Father John? wasn't it smashed
last February?"

"Smashed! why, I think everything gets smashed."

"Well now, Mr. Thady, to hear his riverence going on the like of
that," said the old woman, appealing to Macdermot; "and wasn't it
himself sent the broth down in it to Widow Green the latter end of
last winter, and didn't the foolish slip of a girl, her grand-dater,
go to hait it over the hot coals for the ould woman, jis