“Och, bad luck to it!” said the lad, flinging it away, plate and all.  “It would have been first-rate but for the dirthy pot, and the blackguard cinders, and its burning to the bottom of the pot.  That owld hag, Mrs. R—–­, bewitched it with her evil eye.”

“She is not so clever as you think, John,” said I, laughing.  “You have forgotten how to make the sugar since you left D—–­; but let us forget the maple sugar, and think of something else.  Had you not better get old Mrs. R—–­ to mend that jacket for you; it is too ragged.”

“Ay, dad! an it’s mysel’ is the illigant tailor.  Wasn’t I brought up to the thrade in the Foundling Hospital?”

“And why did you quit it?”

“Because it’s a low, mane thrade for a jintleman’s son.”

“But, John, who told you that you were a gentleman’s son?”

“Och! but I’m shure of it, thin.  All my propensities are gintale.  I love horses, and dogs, and fine clothes, and money.  Och! that I was but a jintleman!  I’d show them what life is intirely, and I’d challenge Masther William, and have my revenge out of him for the blows he gave me.”

“You had better mend your trousers,” said I, giving him a tailor’s needle, a pair of scissors, and some strong thread.

“Shure, an’ I’ll do that same in a brace of shakes,” and sitting down upon a ricketty three-legged stool of his own manufacturing, he commenced his tailoring by tearing off a piece of his trousers to patch the elbows of his jacket.  And this trifling act, simple as it may appear, was a perfect type of the boy’s general conduct, and marked his progress through life.  The present for him was everything; he had no future.  While he supplied stuff from the trousers to repair the fractures in the jacket, he never reflected that both would be required on the morrow.  Poor John! in his brief and reckless career, how often have I recalled that foolish act of his.  It now appears to me that his whole life was spent in tearing his trousers to repair his jacket.

In the evening John asked me for a piece of soap.

“What do you want with soap, John?”

“To wash my shirt, ma’am.  Shure an’ I’m a baste to be seen, as black as the pots.  Sorra a shirt have I but the one, an’ it has stuck on my back so long that I can thole it no longer.”

I looked at the wrists and collar of the condemned garment, which was all of it that John allowed to be visible.  They were much in need of soap and water.

“Well, John, I will leave you the soap, but can you wash?”

“Och, shure, an’ I can thry.  If I soap it enough, and rub long enough, the shirt must come clane at last.”

I thought the matter rather doubtful; but when I went to bed I left what he required, and soon saw through the chinks in the boards a roaring fire, and heard John whistling over the tub.  He whistled and rubbed, and washed and scrubbed, but as there seemed no end to the job, and he was a long washing this one garment as Bell would have been performing the same operation on fifty, I laughed to myself, and thought of my own abortive attempts in that way, and went fast asleep.  In the morning John came to his breakfast, with his jacket buttoned up to his throat.