Page:Monthly scrap book, for April.pdf/18

18 mention, a nice feather bed, with a pair of new blankets-but what am I talking about? may be you have not such things as beds down under the water?"

"By all means," said she, Mr Fitzgerald- plenty of beds at your service. I've fourteen oyster beds of my own, not to mention one just planting for the rearing of young ones.”

“You have," says Dick, scratching his head and looking a little puzzled. "'Tis a feather bed I was speaking of—but clearly, yours is the very cut of a decent plan, to have bed and supper so handy to each other, that a person when they'd have the one, need never ask for the other."

However, bed or no bed, money or no money, Dick Fitzgerald determined to marry the Merrow, and the Merrow had given her consent. Away they went, therefore, across the strand, from Gollerus to Ballinrunnig, where father Fitzgibbon happened to be that morning.

“There are two words to this bargain, Dick Fitzgerald," said his Reverence, looking mighty glum. "And is it a fishy woman you'd marry?- the Lord preserve us!-Send the scaly creature home to her own people, that's my advice to you, wherever she came from."

Dick had the cap in his hand, and was about to give it back to the Merrow, who looked covetously at it, but he thought for a moment, and then says he-

“Your Reverence, she's a king's daughter."

“If she was the daughter of fifty kings,” said Father Fitzgibbon, “I tell you, you can't marry her, she being a fish."