"Hand me out one pound thirteen and fourpence, master. You said if I only kept Browney out of mischief, the rest would do no harm. There she is as harmless as a lamb. Are you sorry for hiring me, master?"
"To be--that is, not at all. I'll give you your money when you go to dinner. Now, understand me; don't let a cow go out of the field nor into the wheat the rest of the day."
"Never fear, master!" and neither did he. But the churl would rather than a great deal he had not hired him.
The next day three heifers were missing, and the master bade Jack go in search of them.
"Oh, every place likely and unlikely for them all to be in."
The churl was getting very exact in his words. When he was coming into the bawn at dinnertime, what work did he find Jack at but pulling armfuls of the thatch off the roof, and peeping into the holes he was making?
"Sure, I'm looking for the heifers, poor things?"
"I don't think anything could bring them in it; but I looked first into the likely places, that is, the cow-houses, and the pastures, and the fields next 'em, and now I'm looking in the unlikeliest place I can think of. Maybe it's not pleasing to you it is."
"And to be sure it isn't pleasing to me, you aggravating goose-cap!"
"Please, sir, hand me one pound thirteen and fourpence before you sit down to your dinner. I'm afraid it's sorrow that's on you for hiring me at all."
"May the div--oh no; I'm not sorry. Will you begin, if you please, and put in the thatch again, just as if you were doing it for your mother's cabin?"
"Oh, faith I will, sir, with a heart and a half"; and by the time the farmer came out for his dinner, Jack had the roof better than it was before, for he made the boy give him new straw.
Says the master when he came out, "Go, Jack, and look for the heifers, and bring them home."
"Go and search for them as if they were your own." The heifers were all in the paddock before sunset.
Next morning says the master, "Jack, the path across the bog to the pasture is very bad; the sheep does be sinking in it every step; go and make the sheep's feet a good path." About an hour after he came to the edge of the bog, and what did he find Jack at but sharpening a carving knife, and the sheep standing or grazing around.