got sitting down with the childre; for, having put two or three potatoes, as usual, my lady, to heat, just on the bar, I thought, tired as I was, I’d iron out the few small things ‘Loo’ had put in blue, particularly a clane cap and handkercher, and the aprons for to-day, as yer honor likes to see me nice; and the boy got a prize at school; for, let me do as I would, I took care they should have the edication that makes the poor rich. Well, I noticed that Loo’s hair was hanging in ringlets down her face, and I says to her, ‘My honey,’ I says, ‘if Annie was you, and she’s my own, I’d make her put up her hair plain; the way her Majesty wears it is good enough, I should think, for such as you, Louisa;’ and with that she says, ‘It might do for Annie; but for her part, her mother was a tradeswoman.’ Well, I bit my tongue to hinder myself from hurting her feelings by telling her what her mother was, for the blush of shame is the only one that misbecomes a woman’s cheek.

But I waited till our work was over, and, picking her out the two mealy potatoes, and sharing, as I always did, my half pint of beer with her, when I had it, I raisoned with her, as I often did before; and looking to where my three sleeping childre lay, little Jemmy’s cheek blooming like a rose, on his prize book, which he took into bed with him, I called God to witness, that though nature, like, would draw my heart more to my own flesh and blood, yet I’d see to her as I would to them.

She made me no answer, but put the potatoes aside, and said, ‘Mother, go to bed.’ I let her call me mother,” continued Biddy, “it’s such a sweet sound, and hinders one, when one has it to call, from feeling lonesome in the world; it’s the shelter for many a breaking heart, and the home of many a wild one; ould as I am, I miss my mother still! ‘Louisa,’ I says, ‘I’ve heard my own childre their prayers—kneel down, a’lanna, there, and get over them.’

‘My throat’s so sore,’ she says, ‘I can’t say ’em out. Don’t ye see I could not eat the potatoes?’ This was about half past twelve, and I had spoke to the po-lis to give me a call at five. But when I woke, the grey of the morning was in the room with me; and knowing where I ought to have been, I hustled on my things, and hearing a po-lis below the window (we know them by the steady tramp they have, as if they’d rather go slow than fast), I says, ‘If you plaise, what’s the clock, and why didn’t you call me?’ ‘It’s half past seven,’ he says; ‘and sure the girl, when she went out at half past five, said you war up.’

‘My God!—what girl?’ I says, turning all over like a corpse; and then I missed my bonnet and shawl, and saw my box empty; she had even taken the book from under the child’s cheek. But that wasn’t all. I’d have forgiven her for the loss of the clothes, and the tears she forced from the eyes of my innocent child; I’d forgive her for making my heart grow oulder in half an hour, than it had grown in its whole life before; but my wedding ring, ma’am!—her head had often this shoulder for its pillow, and I’d throw this arm over her, so. Oh, ma’am darlint, could you believe it?—she stole my wedding ring aff my hand—the hand that had saved and slaved for her! The ring! oh, many’s the tear I’ve shed on it; and many a time, when I’ve been next to starving, and it has glittered in my eyes, I’ve been tempted to part with it, but I couldn’t. It had grown thin, like myself, with the hardship of the world; and yet when I’d look at it twisting on my poor wrinkled finger, I’d think of the times gone by, of him who had put it on, and would have kept his promise but for the temptation of drink, and what it lades to; and those times, when throuble would be crushing me into the earth, I’d think of what I heard onct—that a ring was a thing like etarnity, having no beginning nor end; and I’d turn it, and turn it, and turn it! and find comfort in believing that the little penance here was nothing in comparison to that without a beginning or an end that we war to go to hereafter—it might be in heaven, or it might (God save us!) be in the other place; and,” said poor Biddy, “I drew a dale of consolation from that, and she knew it—she, the sarpint, that I shared my children’s food with—she knew it, and, while I slept the heavy sleep of hard labour, she had the heart to rob me!—to rob me of the only treasure (barring the childre) I had in the world! I’m a great sinner; I can’t say, God forgive her; nor I can’t work; and it’s put me apast doing my duty; and Jessie, the craythur, laid ever so much store by it, on account of the little innocent charrums; and, altogether, it’s the sorest Christmas day that ever came to me. Oh, sure, I wouldn’t have that girl’s heart in my breast for a goolden crown—the ingratitude of her bates the world!”

It really was a case of the most hardened ingratitude I had ever known—the little wretch! to rob the only friend she ever had, while sleeping in the very bed where she had been tended, and tendered, and cared for, so unceasingly. “She might take all I had in the world, if she had only left me that” she repeated continually, while rocking herself backwards and forwards over the fire, after the fashion of her country; “the thrifle of money, the rags, and the child’s book—all—and I’d have had a clane breast. I could forgive her from my heart, but I can’t forgive her for taking my ring—for taking my wedding ring!”

This was not all. The girl was traced and captured; and the same day Biddy was told she must go to Queen-square to identify the prisoner.

“Me,” she exclaimed, “who never was in the place of the law before, what can I say but that she tuck it?”

An Irish cause always creates a sensation in a police-office. The magistrates smile at each other, the reporter cuts his pencil and arranges his note-book, and the clerk covers the lower part of his face with his hand, to conceal the expression that plays around his mouth.

Biddy’s curtsey—a genuine Irish dip—and her opening speech, which she commenced by wishing their honours “a merry Christmas and plenty of them, and that they might have the power of doing good to the end of their days, and never meet with ingratitude for that same,” was the only absurdity connected with her deposition.

When she saw the creature with whom her heart had dwelt so long, in the custody of the police, she was completely overcome, and intermingled her evidence with so many entreaties that mercy should be shown the hardened delinquent, that the magistrate was sensibly affected. Short as was the time that had elapsed between Louisa’s elopement and discovery, she had spent the money and pawned the ring: and twenty hands at least were extended to the Irish Washerwoman with money to redeem the pledge.

Poor Biddy had never been so rich before in all her life; but that did not console her for the sentence passed upon her protegé, and it was a long time before she was restored to her usual spirits. She flagged and pined; and when the spring began to advance a little, and the sun to shine, her misery became quite troublesome, her continual wail being “for the poor sinful craythur who was shut up among stone walls, and would be sure to come out worse than she went in!”

The old cook lived to grow thoroughly ashamed of the reproaches she cast on Biddy, and Jessie shows her off on all occasions as a specimen of an Irish Washerwoman.

Quick Senses of the Arab.—Their eyesight is peculiarly sharp and keen. Almost before I could on the horizon discern more than a moving speck, my guides would detect a stranger, and distinguish upon a little nearer approach, by his garb and appearance, the tribe to which he