_Fardy:_ If I had the like of that of a character it is not here carrying messages I would be. It's in Noonan's Hotel I would be, driving cars.
_Mr. Quirke:_ Here is the priest's housekeeper coming.
_Mrs. Delane:_ So she is; and there is the Sergeant a little while after her.
_Mrs. Delane:_ Good-evening to you, Miss Joyce. What way is his Reverence to-day? Did he get any ease from the cough?
_Miss Joyce:_ He did not indeed, Mrs. Delane. He has it sticking to him yet. Smothering he is in the night time. The most thing he comes short in is the voice.
_Mrs. Delane:_ I am sorry, now, to hear that. He should mind himself well.
_Miss Joyce:_ It's easy to say let him mind himself. What do you say to him going to the meeting to-night? (_Sergeant comes in._) It's for his Reverence's _Freeman_ I am come, Mrs. Delane.
_Mrs. Delane:_ Here it is ready. I was just throwing an eye on it to see was there any news. Good-evening, Sergeant.
_Sergeant:_ (_Holding up a placard._) I brought this notice, Mrs. Delane, the announcement of the meeting to be held to-night in the Courthouse. You might put it up here convenient to the window. I hope you are coming to it yourself?
_Mrs. Delane:_ I will come, and welcome. I would do more than that for you, Sergeant.
_Mr. Quirke:_ I'll come, to be sure. I forget what's this the meeting is about.
_Sergeant:_ The Department of Agriculture is sending round a lecturer in furtherance of the moral development of the rural classes. (_Reads._) "A lecture will be given this evening in Cloon Courthouse, illustrated by magic lantern slides--" Those will not be in it; I am informed they were all broken in the first journey, the railway company taking them to be eggs. The subject of the lecture is "The Building of Character."
_Mrs. Delane:_ Very nice, indeed. I knew a girl lost her character, and she washed her feet in a blessed well after, and it dried up on the minute.
_Sergeant:_ The arrangements have all been left to me, the Archdeacon being away. He knows I have a good intellect for things of the sort. But the loss of those slides puts a man out. The thing people will not see it is not likely it is the thing they will believe. I saw what they call tableaux--standing pictures, you know--one time in Dundrum----