‘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.