Having accomplished these matters, a kind of
guard was set to watch and nurse-tend him; a pitchfork was got, on the
prongs of which they intended to reach him bread across the ditch; and
a long-shafted shovel was borrowed, on which to furnish him drink with
safety to themselves. That inextinguishable vein of humor, which in
Ireland mingles even with death and calamity, was also visible here. The
ragged, half-starved creatures laughed heartily at the oddity of their
own inventions, and enjoyed the ingenuity with which they made shift
to meet the exigencies of the occasion, without in the slightest degree
having their sympathy and concern for the afflicted youth lessened.
When their arrangements were completed, one of them (he of the scythe)
made a little whey, which, in lieu of a spoon, he stirred with the
end of his tobacco-pipe; he then extended it across the ditch upon the
shovel, after having put it in a tin porringer.
"Do you want a taste o' whay, avourneen?"
"Oh, I do," replied Jemmy; "give me a drink for God's sake."
"There it is, _a bouchal_, on the shovel. Musha if myself rightly knows
what side you're lyin' an, or I'd put it as near your lips as I could.
Come, man, be stout, don't be cast down at all at all; sure, bud-an-age,
we' shovelin' the way to you, any how."
"I have it," replied the boy--"oh, I have it. May God never forget this
to you, whoever you are."
"Faith, if you want to know who I am; I'm Pettier Connor the mower, that
never seen to-morrow.
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