It was at this moment Mick entered with the broiled bones, and while he was in the room, placing glasses on the table, and making the necessary arrangements for making "screeching hot punch," he heard O'Grady and Furlong talking about the two lost letters.
On his descent to the kitchen, the cook was spreading a bit of supper there, in which Andy was to join, he having just completed some applications of brown paper and vinegar to the bruises received in his fall. Larry Hogan, too, was invited to share in the repast; and it was not the first time, by many, that Larry quartered on the Squire. Indeed, many a good larder was opened to Larry Hogan; he held a very deep interest in the regards of all the female domestics over the country, not on the strength of his personal charms, for Larry had a hanging lip, a snub nose, a low forehead, a large ugly head, whose scrubby grizzled hair grew round the crown somewhat in the form of a priest's tonsure. Not on the strength of his gallantry, for Larry was always talking morality and making sage reflections, while he supplied the womankind with bits of lace, rolls of ribbon, and now and then silk stockings. He always had some plausible story of how they happened to come in his way, for Larry was not a regular pedlar; carrying no box, he drew his chance treasures from the recesses of very deep pockets contrived in various parts of his attire. No one asked Larry how he came by such a continued supply of natty articles, and if they had, Larry would not have told them; for he was a very "close" man, as well as a "civil-spoken," under which character he was first introduced to the reader on the memorable night of Andy's destructive adventure in his mother's cabin. Larry Hogan was about as shrewd a fellow as any in the whole country, and while no one could exactly make out what _he_ was, or how he made the two ends of his year meet, he knew nearly as much of every one's affairs as they did themselves; in the phrase of the country, he was "as 'cute as a fox, as close as wax, and as deep as a draw-well."
The supper-party sat down in the kitchen, and between every three mouthfuls poor Mick could get, he was obliged to canter up-stairs at the call of the fiercely rung bell. Ever and anon, as he returned, he bolted his allowance with an ejaculation, sometimes pious, sometimes the reverse, on the hard fate of attending such a "born devil," as he called the Squire.