“Musha, ye ate no breakfast, maybe?” Owen and his family were silent. The children looked wistfully at their parents, anxious that they should confirm what the good woman surmised; the father looked again at his famished brood and his sinking wife, and nature overcame him. “Food did not crass our lips this day,” replied Owen; “an' I may say hardly anything yestherday.” “Oh, blessed mother! Here, Katty Murray, drop scrubbin' that dresser, an' put down, the midlin' pot for stirabout. Be livin' _manim an diouol_, woman alive, handle yourself; you might a had it boilin' by this. God presarve us!--to be two days widout atin! Be the crass, Katty, if you're not alive, I'll give you a douse o' the churnstaff that'll bring the fire to your eyes! Do you hear me?” “I do hear you, an' did often feel you, too, for fraid hearin' wouldn't do. You think there's no places in the world but your own, I b'lieve. Faix, indeed! it's well come up wid us, to be randied about wid no less a switch than a churnstaff!” “Is it givin' back talk, you are? Bad end to me, if you look crucked but I'll lave you a mark to remimber me by. What woman 'ud put up wid you but myself, you shkamin flipe? It wasn't to give me your bad tongue I hired you, but to do your business; and be the crass above us, if you turn your tongue on me agin, I'll give you the weight o' the churnstaff. Is it bekase they're poor people that it plased God to bring to this, that you turn up your nose at doin' anything to sarve them? There's not wather enough there, I say--put in more what signifies all the stirabout that 'ud make? Put plinty in: it's betther always to have too much than too little. Faix, I tell you, you'll want a male's meat an' a night's lodgin' afore you die, if you don't mend your manners.” “Och, musha, the poor girl is doin' her best,” observed Kathleen; “an' I'm sure she wouldn't be guilty of usin' pride to the likes of us, or to any one that the Lord has laid his hand upon.” “She had betther not, while I'm to the fore,” said her mistress. “What is she herself? Sure if it was a sin to be poor, God help the world. No; it's neither a sin nor a shame.” “Thanks be to God, no,” said Owen: “it's neither the one nor the other. So long as we keep a fair name, an' a clear conscience, we can't ever say that our case is hard.”