"
"An' I can return the compliment, Toal; it's a shame for both of us to
be bachelors at this time o' day."
"Ah," said the little fellow, "I wasn't Frank Maguire, one of the best
lookin' boys in the barony, an' the most respected, an' why not? Well,
divil a thing afther all like the ould blood, an' if I wanted a pure
dhrop of that same, maybe I don't know where to go to look for it--maybe
I don't, I say!"
"It's Toal's fault that he wasn't married many a year ago," said Art;
"he refused more wives, Frank, than e'er a boy of his years from this to
Jinglety cooeh--divil a lie in it; sure he'll tell you himself."
Now, as Toal is to appear occasionally, and to be alluded to from time
to time in this narrative, we shall give the reader a short sketch or
outline of his physical appearance and moral character. In three words,
then, he had all his father's vices multiplied tenfold, and not one of
his good qualities, such as they were; his hair was of that nondescript
color which partakes at once of the red, the fair, and the auburn; it
was a bad dirty dun, but harmonized with his complexion to a miracle.
That complexion, indeed, was no common one; as we said, it was one
of those which, no matter how frequently it might have been scrubbed,
always presented the undeniable evidences of dirt so thorougly ingrained
into the pores of the skin, that no process could remove it, short
of flaying him alive.
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