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 212 Sheila. Will I boil an egg for your breakfast, granny?

Mrs. Grogan (sarcastically). Oh, to be sure! More extravagance. You know very well I couldn't eat it, and you'll have it for yourself. Waste, waste; nothing but idleness and waste all round. God help me! (Coughs.)

Sheila pours out a cup of tea and hands it to Mrs. Grogan.

Sheila. Drink that drop of tea, granny—it's fresh made.

Mrs. Grogan. What did you do with the bottom of the pot? Threw it to the ducks, I suppose?

Sheila (pointing to the table). I have it here for myself, granny.

Mrs. Grogan (sipping tea). When I was a girl I never got a sup o' tea from year's end to year's end.

Sheila. It was very dear, then; wasn't it?

Mrs. Grogan. It's dear enough still with everybody using it all day long. Did you feed the hens?

Sheila. Long ago, and let the ducks out, too.

Mrs. Grogan. I suppose it's in the oats they'll be by this time. What about the calves? Grogan goes out.

Sheila. I gave them their milk and put them in the bawn.

Mrs. Grogan. With the linen on the hedge? Why, they'll chew it into rags, and, maybe, choke themselves.

Sheila. No, granny, dear; I spread the linen in the upper garden, where the sun comes the earliest.

Mrs. Grogan. I see it's stole ye want it. There's half a dozen tinkers squatted in the quarry.

Sheila (wearily.) They went a week ago.

Mrs. Grogan. Ah, dear! There's what it is to be old! I never hear anything that's going on now till it's all over. Is that egg boiled?

Sheila. Granny, dear, I thought you couldn't take one.

Mrs. Grogan. It's the little bit I eat that's grudged me now, I see.

Though there is little of it in this passage that I quote, the picturesque phrase that no Irish writer is without is Mr. Boyle's, as a matter of course, but there is no