* Paddy Mellon—­a short, thick-set man, with gray hair, which he always kept cropped close—­the most famous shoemaker in the parish:  in fact the Drummond of a large district.  No shoes considered worth wearing if he did not make them.  But, having admitted this, I am bound in common justice and honesty to say that so big a liar never put an awl into leather.  No language could describe his iniquity in this respect.  I myself am a living-witness of this.  Many a trudge has the villain taken out of me in my boyhood, and as sure as I went on the appointed day—­which was always Saturday—­so surely did he swear that they would be ready for me on that day week.  He was, as a tradesman, the most multifarious and barefaced liar I ever met; and what was the most rascally trait about him, was the faculty he possessed of making you believe the lie as readily after the fifteenth repetition of it, as when it was uttered fresh from his lips.

“‘Oh, nothing,’ responded Katty, ‘only that you missed a sight, anyway.’

“‘What was it Kitty, ahagur?’ asked her companion with mighty great curiosity.

“’Why, nothing less, indeed, nor Rose Cullenan decked out in a white muslin gown, and a black sprush bonnet, tied under her chin wid a silk ribbon, no less; but what killed us out and out was—­you wouldn’t guess?’

“’Arrah, how could I guess, woman alive?  A silk handkerchy, maybe; for I wouldn’t doubt the same Rose but she would be setting herself up for the likes of such a thing.’

“’It’s herself that had, as red as scarlet, about her neck; but that’s not it.’

“’Arrah, Katty, tell it to us at wanst; out with it, ahagur; sure there’s no treason in it, anyhow.’

“’Why, thin, nothing less nor a crass-bar red-and-white pocket-handkerchy, to wipe her purty complexion wid!’

“To this Peggy replied by a loud laugh, in which it was difficult to say whether there was more of satire than astonishment.

“‘A pocket-handkerchy!’ she exclaimed; ’musha, are we alive afther that, at all at all!  Why, that bates Molly M’Cullagh and her red mantle entirely.  I’m sure, but it’s well come up for the likes of her, a poor, imperint crathur, that sprung from nothing, to give herself such airs.’

“‘Molly M’Cullagh, indeed,’ said Katty, ’why, they oughtn’t to be mintioned in the one day, woman.  Molly’s come of a dacent ould stock, and kind mother for her to keep herself in genteel ordher at all times; she sees nothing else, and can afford it, not all as one as the other flipe* that would go to the world’s end for a bit of dress.’

     * Flipe—­One who is “flippant”—­of which word it is the
     substantive, and a good one too.

“’ Sure she thinks she’s a beauty, too, if you plase,’ said Peggy, tossing her head with an air of disdain; ’but tell us, Katty, how did the muslin sit upon her at all, the upsetting crathur?’

“’Why, for all the world like a shift on a Maypowl, or a stocking on a body’s nose:  only nothing killed us outright but the pocket-handkerchy!’