And it's whole we've kept it then, and added more to it, and bought many's the thing to comfort us, which we never should have had, may be, if it wasn't for the nest-egg we got that way from my lady--blessings be on her!--So here's a fine proof, that proverbs ar'n't always to be depended upon. They say three things, which may be true sometimes, but not always:--the first is, that “Fortune is blind”--now we'd good luck come to us; and it's true we deserved it,--that is, Aggie did, if I didn't;--and what's more, we wanted it. “Aisy got, aisy gone;”--that's another proverb we've given the lie to; for what we've laid out we spent discreetly, and on no occasion without many's the pro and con whether we'd do so or no.--Lastly, it's said, “An eel won't slip through our fingers faster than the guinea that's given us;”--but I'd knock that on the head any day, by shewing what we got from my lady the first day she set foot in my cabin,--and that's long ago. So that I, and, may be, a good many more, can say, “Fortune isn't always blind;--aisy got, may be held fast;--and all eels are not slippery.” [Illustration: 253] UNDER THE THUMB. Duck Davie's wife's brother, Paddy Doolan, lives among his pigs, poultry, and potatos, over-right Mick's place,--the man that saw the little Fairy in the oysther-shells. Paddy gets his bread by rearing turkies and geese, and similar commodities, and buying bits o' pigs about here and there, where he can, and selling them at the market in the next town,--may be, once a month or so;--and many's the penny Pat has turned one way or another, any how. Well,--Pat has a wife,--and not a bad one, he ought to think, if he looks about him and sees what other men's are, and draws comparisons. She's not very big; but she has a black eye, and bustles about; and though she wears a whiskey-bottle, she keeps Pat from doing himself harm from much drinking: and if she does have a drop between whiles, more than does her good exactly, why, she keeps up appearances, by always making wry faces whenever she takes a sup of comfort afore her neighbours. She has a limp in her gait, but cooks a cobbler's nob dilicately; and her temper's not bad, though not much better than just middling like the peathees, as we say: still, there's few in the barony with less holes, and holes sooner mended too, in her sherkeen, than Mistress Doolan; and, as wives go, as I said, there's worse than Pat's. She's forty-nine years of age, come Candlemas; but does not keep the house so clane as she might:--but then, to be sure, there's the pigs--