_Teag._ Arra dear honey, I had too much wit of my own to be teached by him, or any body else; he began to instruct me after that how I should serve the table, and such nasty things as those: one night I took ben a roasted fish in one hand, and a piece of bread in the other; the old gentleman was so saucy he would not take it, and told me I should bring nothing to him without a trencher below it. The same night as he was going to bed, he called for his slippers and pish-pot, so I clapt a trencher below the pish-pot, and another below the slippers, and ben I goes, one in every hand; no sooner did I enter the room than he threw the pish-pot at me, which broke both my head and the pish-pot at one blow; now, said I, the devil is in my master altogether, for what he commands at one time he countermands at another. Next day I went with him to the market to buy a sack of potatoes, I went to the potatoe-monger, and asked what he took for the full of a Scot’s cog, he weighed them in, he asked no less than fourpence; fourpence, said I, if I were but in Dublin, I could got the double of that for nothing, and in Cork and Linsale far cheaper; them is but small things like pease, said I, but the potatoes in my country is as big as your head, fine meat, all made up in blessed mouthfuls; the potatoe-merchant called me a liar, and my master called me a fool, so the one fell a-kicking me, and the other a cuffing me, I was in such bad bread among them, that I called myself both a liar and a fool to get off alive. _Tom._ And how did you carry your potatoes home from the market. _Teag._ Arra dear shoy, I carried the horse and them both, besides a big loaf, and two bottles of wine; for I put the old horse on my back, and drove the potatoes before me, and when I tied the load to the loaf, I had nothing to do but to carry the bottle in my hand: but bad luck to the way as I came home, for a nail out of the heal of my foot sprung a leak in my brogue, which pricked the very bone, bruised the skin, and made my brogue itself to blood, and I having no hammer by me, but a hatchet I left at home, I had to beat down the nail with the bottom of the bottle: and by the book, dear shoy, it broke to pieces, and scattered the wine in my mouth. _Tom._ And how did you recompense your master for the loss of the bottle of wine? _Teag._ Arra dear shoy, I had a mind to cheat him and myself too, for I took the bottle to a blacksmith, and desired him to mend it that I might go to the butcher and get it full of bloody water, but he told me he could not work in any thing but steel and iron. Arra, said I, if I were in my own kingdom, I could get a blacksmith who would make a bottle out of a stone, and a stone out of nothing. _Tom._ And how did you trick your master out of it?