“That, Susy,” replied Denis, “is, and will be the most difficult point on which to accomplish anything like a satisfactory determination. I have nieces enough, however. There's Peter Finnegan's eldest daughter Mary, and Hugh Tracy's Ailsey--(to whom he added about a dozen and a half more)--together with several yet to be endowed with existence, all of whom will be brisk candidates for the situation.” “I don't think,” replied Mrs. O'Shaughnessy, “that you'll ever get any one who'd be more comfortable about you nor your own ould mother. What do you think of takin' myself, Denis?” “Ay, but consider the accomplishments in the culinary art--_in re vel in arte culinaria_--which will be necessary for my housekeeper to know. How would you, for instance, dress a dinner for the bishop if he happened to pay me a visit, as you may be certain he will? How would you make pies and puddings, and disport your fancy through all the varieties of roast and boil? How would you dress a fowl that it would stand upon a dish as if it was going to dance a hornpipe? How would you amalgamate the different genera of wine with boiling fluid and crystallized saccharine matter? How would you dispose of the various dishes upon the table according to high life and mathematics? Wouldn't you be too old to bathe my feet when I'd be unwell? Wouldn't you be too old to bring me my whey in the morning soon as I'd awake, perhaps with a severe headache, after the plenary indulgence of a clerical compotation? Wouldn't you be too old to sit up till the middle of the nocturnal hour, awaiting my arrival home? Wouldn't you be--” “Hut, tut, that's enough, Denny, I'd never do at all. No, no, but I'll sit a clane, dacent ould woman in the corner upon a chair that you'll get made for me. There I'll be wid my pipe and tobacco, smokin' at my aise, chattin' to the sarvints, and sometimes discoorsin' the neighbors that'll come to inquire for you, when they'll be sittin' in the kitchen waitin' till you get through your office. Jist let me have that, Dinny achora, and I'll be as happy as the day's long.” “And I on the other side,” said his father, naturally enough struck with the happy simplicity of the picture which his wife drew, “on the other side, Mave, a snug, dacent ould man, chattin' to you across the fire, proud to see the bishop an' the gintlemen about him. An' I wouldn't ax to be taken into the parlor at all, except, maybe, when there would be nobody there but yourself, Denis; an' that your mother an' I would go into the parlor to get a glass of punch, or, if it could be spared, a little taste of wine for novelty.”