“Well, they brought him port wine, an’ they brought him whisky, an’ they brought a beautiful velvet cushion an’ put it under the gentleman’s fut; an’ the Gout winks to himself, an’ says he, ’Troth, I’ll not be in a hurry to quit out o’ this.  Sure it’s in clover altogether I am,’ he says.

“Well, there ye have the story now, alanna, an’ here’s herself comin’ down the hill an’ Mike afther her.”

But Roseen was too much excited to heed the last announcement.  “Was it this way, the way the rich man was groanin’?” she asked, once more imitating Pat’s extraordinary utterances.  The old man nodded, and Roseen stood still meditatively scratching one little brown leg with the curved-in toes of the other.  “I wisht,” she observed presently, in a pensive tone, “that a Gout ’ud get into me gran’father’s big toe; it ’ud sarve him right!”

Pat was rubbing his hands and chuckling to himself over this remark when his wife entered, hot and weary after her peregrinations over the ruins.

“Sixpence is all they’re afther givin’ me,” she observed plaintively.  “Dear knows, it’s hard set we are to live these times at all.”

“Is it sixpence, woman alive!” cried Pat; “I wonder they had the face to offer it to ye.  Well, well, I was looking for a shillin’ now, or maybe two.  Here, cut the child a bit o’ griddle cake; she’s been keepin’ me company this long while, haven’t ye, Roseen?  An’ it’s starvin’ she is out-an’-out.”

“Come here, alanna,” said Mrs. Clancy, taking down the flat loaf from the shelf in the corner; “wait till I put a pinch o’ sugar on it.  I’m sorry I haven’t butther for ye, but there isn’t a bit in the house at all.  There now.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Roseen, extending an eager hand.

“Ye’re welcome, darlint.  Here, Mike, ye’d like a bit too, wouldn’t ye?”

“Aye,” said Mike, drawing near likewise.

He was a sturdy little fellow of about eleven, with an open sunburnt face, hair bleached almost lint-white by the sun, and twinkling blue eyes like his father’s.  The mother passed her thin knotted hand lovingly over his tangled head and smilingly bade him “be off out o’ that with Roseen.”

The two little figures darted out in the sunlight, and soon were to be seen bounding like deer up the steep golden-green slope that led to the “Rock.”

“What do ye think the little one there is afther sayin’ to me?” asked Pat, shading his eyes with his hand as he peered after them. “’I wisht,’ says she, ’a Gout ‘ud get into me gran’father’s fut,’ says she; ’it ‘ud sarve him right,’ she says.  I was afther tellin’ her the ‘Story of the Spider an’ the Gout,’ ye know.”

“Did she now?” cried Mrs. Clancy, sinking down on the stool which Roseen had vacated and clapping her hands together.  “Well now, that bates all!  But she’s the ’cutest little thing—­I never seen her aiqual.”

“‘I wisht,’ quoted Dan meditatively, ’a Gout ’ud get into me gran’father’s big toe an’ stay there,’ says she.  Ha, ha; bedad I wisht it would too, the ould naygur.”