ords?"

"You might send twenty for the same sum," was the bland reply.

"Faix, and so we will," said Joe. "Give me a pen and a sheet of paper."

His first inspirations were so full of vengeance that he actually
meditated a distinct refusal of whatever it was had been offered to his
master, and his only doubt was how to convey the insolent negative in
its most outrageous form. His second and wiser thoughts suggested a
little diplomacy; and though both the consideration and the mode
of effectuating it cost no small labor, we shall spare the reader's
patience, and give him the result arrived at after nearly an hour's
exertion, the message transmitted by Joe running thus:--

"Send the fullest particulars about the pay and the name of the place we
're going to.

"O'Shea."

"I don't think there will be many secrets after I see the answer to
that; and see it I will, if I tear it open!" said Joe, sturdily, as he
held his way back to the inn.

A rather warm discussion ensued on the subject of his long absence,
O'Shea remarking that for all the use Joe proved himself he might as
well be without a servant, and Joe rejoining that, for the matter of
pay and treatment, _he_ might be pretty nearly as well off if he had no
master; these polite passages being interchanged while the O'Shea was
busily performing with two hair-brushes, and Joe equally industriously
lacing his master's waistcoat, with an artistic skill that the valet of
a corpulent gentleman alone attains to, as Joe said a hundred times.

"I wonder why I endure you," said O'Shea, as he jauntily settled his hat
on one side of his head, and carefully arranged the hair on the other.

"And you 'll wondher more, when I 'm gone, why I did n't go before," was
Joe's surly rejoinder.

"How did you come by that striped cravat, sir?" asked O'Shea, angrily,
as he caught sight of Joe in front.

"I took it out of the drawer."

"It's mine, then!"

"It was wonst I did n't suppose you 'd wear it after what the widow
woman said of you up at the Villa,--that Mrs. Morris. 'Here 's the
O'Shea,' says she, 'masquerading as a zebra;' as much as to say it was
another baste you was in reality."

"She never dared to be so insolent"

"She did; I heard it myself."

"I don't believe you; I never do believe one word you say."

"That's exactly what I hear whenever I say you 're a man of fine fortune
and good estate; they all cry out, 'What a lying rascal he is!'"

O'Shea made a spri