and big brass buttons, white cord breeches, and shiny top-boots, his great bunch of watch-seals bobbing about like the pendulum of a clock, a black thorn stick under his arm, and a wonderfully-furry white hat covering his moon-looking face, he fancied himself the very impersonation of moneyed importance. 

 "And maybe you'll tell me, ma'am," said he, as he pulled on a pair of big buckskin gloves, "what you want to be gallivantin' about the streets for at this transitory moment?" 

 "I choose it," replied the obedient wife. "It's for the benefit of my health, so howld your gab." 

 "Ah! what unnatural vulgarity." 

 "If you don't let me be, I'll talk about the shop in the street, loud, so that everybody can hear me." 

 "I wish to my gracious I had never left it," said he, with a sigh so heavy that it must have carried truth with it. 

 "Give me your arm, do, and make haste," cried Mrs. Pether, giving a precautionary shake to her numerous, but insufficient flounces. "I'm dyin' to dazzle ould Mrs. Magillicuddy with this bran new shawl." 

 "Yes," replied Pether, with a glance of resigned conviction, "that's what I thought the benefit to your health would amount to." 

 So the Squire and his lady—no, I mean Mrs. Peter Bulworthy and her husband—sallied forth, to astonish a few of their neighbors, and amuse a great many more; both Barney, the anomalous man-servant, and Mary, the "maid," pulling up their respective corners of the window-blind to see them, and watch the effect they produced. 

 "There they go," grunted Barney, with a contemptuous toss of his already scornfully-elevated nose, "the laughin'-stocks of the whole town; dressin' me up this way,"—and he gave his nether extremities a glance of derision—"like an overgrown parrot—me, that niver had anything on me back, but an ould canvas apron, an' a dirty face, now I can't stir out o' the house, that I'm not fairly ashamed o' meself; there isn't a gossoon in the barony that doesn't know me as well as av I was the town pump, an' I can't show meself in the place, that they don't hunt me about as av I was a wild nagur. Look at them stockin's, Mary, acush, there's flimsy, skimpin things, for a cowld Christian to wear on his gams; I'll be ketchin' me death wid them, I know I will. Mary, I'll be on me oath av I don't think them legs'll carry me off yit." 

 CHAPTER II. 

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