“Faix, then, ye mustn't say that, any how,” said Kerry, insinuatingly: “_you_ have no rayson to spake again it. 'Twas Tuesday week last I heerd Father Luke say--it was to myself he said it--'How is Mrs. Branagan, Kerry?' says he. 'She's well and hearty, your reverence,' says I. 'I'll tell you what she is, Kerry,' says he, 'she's looking just as I knew her five-and-thirty years ago; and a comelier, dacenter woman wasn't in the three baronies. I remember well,' says he, 'I seen her at the fair of Killarney, and she had a cap with red ribbons.' Hadn't ye a cap with red ribbons in it?” A nod was the response. “True for him, ye see he didn't forget it; and says he, 'She took the shine out of the fair; she could give seven pounds, and half a distance, to ere a girl there, and beat her after by a neck.'” “What's that ye're saying?” said Mrs. Branagan, who didn't comprehend the figurative language of the turf, particularly when coming from Father Luke's lips. “I'm saying ye were the purtiest woman that walked the fair-green,” said Kerry, correcting his phraseology. “Father Luke was a smart little man then himself, and had a nate leg and foot.” “Killarney was a fine place I'm tould,” said Kerry, with a dexterous shift to change the topic. “I wasn't often there myself, but I heerd it was the iligant fair entirely.” “So it was,” said Mrs. Branagan; “there never was the kind of sport and divarsion wasn't there. It begun on a Monday and went through the week; and short enough the time was. There was dancing, and fighting, and singing, and 'stations,' up to Aghadoe and down again on the bare knees, and a pilgrimage to the holy well--three times round that, maybe after a jig two hours long; and there was a dwarf that tould fortunes, and a friar that sould gospels agin fever, and fallin' sickness, and ballad-singers, and play-actors. Musha, there never was the like of it;” and in this strain did, she pour forth a flood of impassioned eloquence on the recollection of those carnal pleasures and enjoyments which, but a few minutes before, she had condemned so rigidly in others, nor was it till at the very close of her speech that she suddenly perceived how she had wandered from her text; then with a heavy groan she muttered--“Ayeh! we're sinful craytures, the best of us.” Kerry responded to the sentiment with a fac-simile sigh, and the peace was ratified. “You wouldn't believe now what Miss Kate is bringing over with her--faix, you wouldn't believe it.” “Maybe a monkey,” said Mrs. Branagan, who had a vague notion that France lay somewhere within the tropics. “Worse nor that.” “Is it a bear?” asked she again. “No, but a French maid, to dress her hair, and powder her, and put patches on her face.” “Whisht, I tell you,” cried Mrs. Branagan, “and don't be talking that way. Miss Kate was never the one to turn to the likes of them things.”