‘Is it of buying you are speaking? And where am I to get the money?’

‘Ah! that’s another thing!’

‘Faith it is, honey! - And now the Christmas holidays is coming, when I shall be at home by day as well as night, and then what am I to do? Since I have been a saggarting, I have been good for nothing at all - neither for work nor Greek - only to play cards! Faith, it’s going mad I will be!’

‘I say, Murtagh!’

‘Yes, Shorsha dear!’

‘I have a pack of cards.’

‘You don’t say so, Shorsha ma vourneen? - you don’t say that you have cards fifty-two?’

‘I do, though; and they are quite new - never been once used.’

‘And you’ll be lending them to me, I warrant?’

‘Don’t think it! - But I’ll sell them to you, joy, if you like.’

‘Hanam mon Dioul! am I not after telling you that I have no money at all!’

‘But you have as good as money, to me, at least; and I’ll take it in exchange.’

‘What’s that, Shorsha dear?’

‘Irish!’

‘Irish?’

‘Yes, you speak Irish; I heard you talking it the other day to the cripple. You shall teach me Irish.’

‘And is it a language-master you’d be making of me?’

‘To be sure! - what better can you do? - it would help you to pass your time at school. You can’t learn Greek, so you must teach Irish!’

Before Christmas, Murtagh was playing at cards with his brother Denis, and I could speak a considerable quantity of broken Irish.


  By PanEris using Melati.

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