ough--the weighty and momentous concern was as yet unsettled.

This was the feast; and alas! never was the want of experience more
strongly felt than here. Katty was a bad cook, even to a proverb; and
bore so indifferent a character in the country for cleanliness, that
very few would undertake to eat her butter. Indeed, she was called Katty
Sallagh (* Dirty Katy) on this account: however, this prejudice, whether
ill or weil founded, was wearing fast away, since Phaddhy had succeeded
to the stocking of guineas, and the Lisnaskey farm. It might be, indeed,
that her former poverty helped her neighbors to see this blemish more
clearly: but the world is so seldom in the habit of judging people's
qualities or failings through this uncharitable medium, that the
supposition is rather doubtful. Be this as it may, the arrangements for
the breakfast and dinner must be made. There was plenty of bacon, and
abundance of cabbages--eggs, ad infinitum--oaten and wheaten bread in
piles--turkeys, geese, pullets, as fat as aldermen--cream as rich as
Croesus--and three gallons of poteen, one sparkle of which, as Father
Philemy said in the course of the evening, would lay the hairs on St.
Francis himself in his most self-negative mood, if he saw it. So far so
good: everything excellent and abundant in its way. Still the higher and
more refined items--the _deliciae epidarum_--must be added. White bread,
and tea, and sugar, were yet to be got; and lump-sugar for the punch;
and a tea-pot and cups and saucers to be borrowed; all which was
accordingly done.

Well, suppose everything disposed for tomorrow's feast;--suppose Phaddhy
himself to have butchered the fowl, because Katty, who was not able to
bear the sight of blood, had not the heart to kill "the crathurs" and
imagine to yourself one of the servant men taking his red-hot tongs
out of the fire, and squeezing a large lump of hog's lard, placed in a
grisset, or _Kam_, on the hearth, to grease all their brogues; then see
in your mind's eye those two fine, fresh-looking girls, slyly take
their old rusty fork out of the fire, and going to a bit of three-corned
looking-glass, pasted into a board, or, perhaps, to a pail of water,
there to curl up their rich-flowing locks, that had hitherto never known
a curl but such, as nature gave them.

On one side of the hob sit two striplings, "thryin' wan another in their
catechiz," that they may be able to answer, with some credit, to-morrow.
On the othe