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 door, but turned back again, with that pleading inclination of the head, that smile, showing her long, wabbling teeth.

"Ye must excuse me, sor," she said, "fer throublin' ye so, but ye're a koind, saft-hearted man—ye couldn't git th' laad a job now—shure Oi know ye couldn't—he's an hones' b'y an' a willin' worker, sor, whin he can git annything to do—ye must excuse me, sor."

Malachi was deeply chagrined. He actually got up and peeped again around the corner of the partition, and then said hastily, so as to close a painful and scandalous incident:

"Let th' b'y come down an' see me in th' marnin', ma'am, an' here's a bit o' caar fare fer ye. Do ye go now an' take th' caar home. 'Tis a long waays fer ye to walk, ye niver ought a done it."

The old woman objected at first, but finally consented to accept the coin on the basis of a loan, and then, blessing him again and again, courtesied herself in an old-fashioned, rheumatic way out of the door. And then Malachi tilted up his glass and drained the last drop. The toddy had grown quite cold.