“Faix, ma'am, and it's driving ye may call it,” said one of the pair, as he sipped a very smoking compound the hostess had just mixed, “a hard gallop every step of the way, barrin' the bit of a hill at Carrignacurra.” “Well, I hope ye had the decent hansel for it, any how, Jim?” “I'm Joe, ma'am, av its plazing to ye; Jim is the pole-end boy; he rides the layders. And it's true for ye--they behaved dacent.” “A goold guinea, divil a less”--said the other, “there's no use in denying it. Begorra, it was all natural, them's as rich as Crasis; sure didn't I see the young lady herself throwing out the tenpenny bits to the gossoons, as we went by, as if it was dirt; bad luck to me, but I was going to throw down the Bishop of Cloyne.” “Throw down who?” said the hostess. “The near wheeler, ma'am; he's a broken-kneed ould divil, we bought from the bishop, and called him after him; and as I was saying, I was going to cross them on the pole, and get a fall, just to have a scramble for the money, with the gaffers.” “'They look so poor,' says she. God help her--it's little poverty she saw--there isn't one of them crayters hasn't a sack of potatoes.” “Ay--more of them a pig.” “And hens,” chimed in the first speaker, with a horror at the imposition of people so comfortably endowed, affecting to feel any pressure or poverty. “And what's bringing them here at all?” said Mrs. M'Kelly, with a voice of some asperity; for she foresaw no pleasant future in the fact of a resident great man, who would not be likely to give any encouragement to the branch of traffic her principal customers followed. “Sorrow one of me knows,” was the safe reply of the individual addressed, who not being prepared with any view of the matter, save that founded on the great benefit to the country, preferred this answer to a more decisive one. “'Tis to improve the property, they say,” interposed the other, who was not equally endowed with caution. “To look after the estate himself he has come.” “Improve, indeed!” echoed the hostess. “Much we want their improving! Why didn't they leave us the ould families of the country? It's little we used to hear of improving, when I was a child. God be good to us.--There was ould Miles O'Donoghue, the present man's father, I'd like to see what he'd say, if they talked to him about improvement. Ayeh! sure I mind the time a hogshead of claret didn't do the fortnight. My father, rest his soul, used to go up to the house every Monday morning for orders; and ye'd see a string of cars following him at the same time, with tay, and sugar, and wine, and brandy, and oranges, and lemons. Them was the raal improvements!” “'Tis true for ye, ma'am. It was a fine house, I always heerd tell.” “Forty-six in the kitchen, besides about fourteen colleens and gossoons about the place; the best of enthertainment up stairs and down.” “Musha! that was grand.”