mpassionately,
stuffing his lighted pipe into his pocket, as I drifted desolately past
him. "Sure you're killed with the load you have! This is a rough owld
place for a lady to be walkin'. Sit down, Miss. God knows you have a
right to be tired."

It seemed that with Croppy also the day was dragging, doubtless he too
had lunched on Mrs. Coolahan's pork. He planted my camp-stool and I sank
upon it.

"Well, now, for all it's so throublesome," he resumed, "I'd say painting
was a nice thrade. There was a gintleman here one time that was a
painther--I used to be dhrivin' him. Faith! there wasn't a place in the
counthry but he had it pathrolled. He seen me mother one day--cleaning
fish, I b'lieve she was, below on the quay--an' nothing would howld him
but he should dhraw out her picture!" Croppy laughed unfilially. "Well,
me mother was mad. 'To the divil I pitch him!' says she; 'if I wants me
photograph drew out I'm liable to pay for it,' says she, 'an' not to be
stuck up before the ginthry to be ped for the like o' that!' 'Tis for;
you bein' so handsome!' says I to her. She was black mad altogether
then. 'If that's the way,' says she, 'it's a wondher he wouldn't ax
yerself, ye rotten little rat,' says she, 'in place of thrying could he
make a show of yer poor little ugly little cock-nosed mother!' 'Faith!'
says I to her, 'I wouldn't care if the divil himself axed it, if he give
me a half-crown and nothing to do but to be sittin' down!'"

The tale may or may not have been intended to have a personal
application, but Croppy's fat scarlet face and yellow moustache,
bristling beneath a nose which he must have inherited from his mother,
did not lend themselves to a landscape background, and I fell to
fugitive pencil sketches of the old white car-horse as he grazed round
us. It was thus that I first came to notice a fact whose bearing upon
our fortunes I was far from suspecting. The old horse's harness was of
dingy brown leather, with dingier brass mountings; it had been
frequently mended, in varying shades of brown, and, in remarkable
contrast to the rest of the outfit, the breeching was of solid and
well-polished black leather, with silver buckles. It was not so much the
discrepancy of the breeching as its respectability that jarred upon me;
finally I commented upon it to Croppy.

[Illustration: "CROPPY."]

His cap was tilted over the maternal nose, he glanced at me sideways
from under its peak.

"Sure the other breechin'