There was an entire absence of spittoons in the place, and as all who visited there chewed tobacco, or smoked, the sanitary condition of the floor may be imagined but not portrayed. The scrubbing-brush or mop never interfered with the supreme sway of abominations. An old broom occasionally touched the surface of the boards, or the coating above them, but soap and water were “too dampening for the children”—who, by its use, might take sudden colds—to be placed upon anything in the house, where their use could possibly be dispensed with. An old tin kettle contained the smoking tobacco, and as it generally stood on the floor, excepting when being passed from smoker to smoker, sundry discharged and useless quids got mixed with the article to be used in pipes, and McKenna was about to refuse to fill his doodeen when he looked at Cuff, who was regarding him carefully over his cards, and remembering a caution he had received, he choked down his rising gorge, employed some of the tobacco, and handed the kettle to Fergus. Mrs. Cuff was in most respects a fitting helpmate for Micky. She was fully as fine-looking as her husband, but small in figure and undemonstrative in demeanor, implicitly relying upon the ungainly partner of her bosom as a wonderfully superior being—in truth, as one of the greatest and best of men. She performed what he might order, in any emergency, promptly and uncomplainingly, and so lived that she made not an enemy in the town. True, her progeny wanted clothing sometimes, and wallowed in the dust, as dirty as the _bonneens_ in the sty, growing up as tough as maple knots and as uneducated as Hottentots, but it was not her fault. She had never been taught any better, and as long as Micky thought it right, the whole world would be wrong entirely, if found to differ with his expressed opinion. She worked hard to keep her large family fed and clothed, but the urchins would climb rocks, and fences, and slide down cellar doors, and hence their garments would show holes and rents. They exhibited little evidence in their persons that clean water ran in streams, or stood in wells, and that soap was cheap at corner groceries. Rather the contrary. But they and she had always been accustomed to such a life, and cannot be blamed for believing it their natural state of existence. After several games at cards, in which Cuff and his partner came out ahead, he proposed that McKenna should give them a song. “I hear you are a wild boy wid the music an’ dance,” said the good old man, trying to appear companionable; “an’ I have, these many days, been wantin’ to see yez, an’ hear some of your best!” “Yes,” chimed in Monaghan. “A song! A song!” “Do, plaze favor us!” echoed Mrs. Cuff, who was now sitting by the stove, mending a bifurcated garment intended to cover the body of one of the younger Cuffs. [Illustration: “_The others withdrawing somewhat from the table, he seated himself upon it and began._”]