“When their childre grew up, little care was taken of them, bekase their parents minded other people’s business more nor their own.  They were always in the greatest poverty and distress; for Larry would be killing time about the Squire’s, or doing some handy job for a neighbor who could get no other man to do it.  They now fell behind entirely in the rint, and Larry got many hints from the Squire that if he didn’t pay more attention to his business, he must look after his arrears, or as much of it as he could make up from the cattle and the crop.  Larry promised well, as far as words went, and no doubt hoped to be able to perform; but he hadn’t steadiness to go through with a thing.  Thruth’s best;—­you see both himself and his wife neglected their business in the beginning, so that everything went at sixes and sevens.  They then found themselves uncomfortable at their own hearth, and had no heart to labor:  so that what would make a careful person work their fingers to the stumps to get out of poverty, only prevented them from working at all, or druv them to work for those that had more comfort, and could give them a better male’s mate than they had themselves.

“Their tempers, now, soon began to get sour:  Larry thought, bekase Sally wasn’t as careful as she ought to be, that if he had taken any other young woman to his wife, he wouldn’t be as he was;—­she thought the very same thing of Larry.  ‘If he was like another,’ she would say to his brother, ’that would be up airly and late at his own business, I would have spirits to work, by rason it would cheer my heart to see our little farm looking as warm and comfortable as anothers; but, fareer gairh (* bitter misfortune) that’s not the case, nor likely to be so, for he spinds his time from one place to another, working for them that laughs at him for his pains; but he’d rather go to his neck in wather than lay down a hand for himself, except when he can’t help it.’

“Larry, again, had his complaint—­’Sally’s a lazy trollop,’ he would say to his brother’s wife, ’that never does one hand’s turn that she can help, but sits over the fire from morning till night, making bird’s nests in the ashes with her yallow heels, or going about from one neighbor’s house to another, gosthering and palavering about what doesn’t consarn her, instead of minding the house.  How can I have heart to work, when I come in—­expecting to find my dinner ready; but, instead of that, get her sitting upon her hunkers on the hearthstone; blowing at two or three green sticks with her apron, the pot hanging on the crook, without even the white horses on it.* She never puts a stitch in my clothes, nor in the childher’s clothes, nor in her own, but lets them go to rags at once—­the divil’s luck to her!  I wish I had never met with her, or that I had married a sober girl, that wasn’t fond of dress and dancing.  If she was a good sarvint, it was only because she liked to have a good name; for when she got a house and place of her own, see how she turned out!’