_Nestor:_ (_Scratching his head._) I suppose now you wouldn’t care to play a game of Twenty-five? _Mrs. Broderick:_ I am surprised at you, Mr. Nestor, asking me to go cardplaying on such a day and at such an hour as this. _Nestor:_ I wonder might some person come in and give an order for ten pounds’ worth of the stock? _Mrs. Broderick:_ Much good it would do me. Sure I have the most of it on credit. _Nestor:_ Well, there is no knowing. Some well-to-do person now passing the street might have seen you and taken a liking to you and be willing to make an advance or a loan. _Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, who would be taking a liking to me as they might to a young girl in her bloom. _Nestor:_ Oh, it’s a sort of thing might happen. Sure age didn’t catch on to you yet; you are clean and fresh and sound. What’s this I was reading in “Answers.” (_Looks at it._) “Romantic elopement....” _Mrs. Broderick:_ I know of no one would be thinking of me for a wife ... unless it might be yourself, Mr. Nestor.... _Nestor:_ (_Jumping up and speaking fast and running finger up and down paper._) “Performance of Dick Whittington.” ... There now, there is a story that I read in my reading, it was called Whittington and the Cat. It was the cat led to his fortune. There might some person take a fancy to your cat.... _Mrs. Broderick:_ Ah, let you have done now. I have no cat this good while. I banished it on the head of it threatening the jackdaw. _Nestor:_ The jackdaw? _Mrs. Broderick:_ (_Fetches cage from inner room._) Sure I reared it since the time it fell down the chimney and I going into my bed. It is often you should have seen it, in or out of its cage. Hero his name is. Come out now, Hero. (_Opens cage._) _Nestor:_ (_Slapping his side._) That is it ... that’s the very thing. Listen to me now, Mrs. Broderick, there are some might give a good price for that bird. (_Sitting down to the work._) It chances now there is a friend of mine in South Africa. A mine owner he is ... very rich ... but it is down in the mine he has to live by reason of the Kaffirs ... it is hard to keep a watch upon them in the half dark, they being black. _Mrs. Broderick:_ I suppose.... _Nestor:_ He does be lonesome now and again, and he is longing for a bird to put him in mind of old Ireland ... but he is in dread it would die in the darkness ... and it came to his mind that it is a custom with jackdaws to be living in chimneys, and that if any birds would bear the confinement it is they that should do it. _Mrs. Broderick:_ And is it to buy jackdaws he is going? _Nestor:_ Isn’t that what I am coming to. (_He pulls out notes._) Here now is ten pounds I have to lay out for him. Take them now and good luck go with them, and give me the bird. _Mrs. Broderick:_ Notes is it? Is it waking or dreaming I am and I standing up on the floor? _Nestor:_ Good notes and ten of them. Look at them! National Bank they are.... Count them now, according to your fingers, and see did I tell any lie.