Before Kearney could reply--for something like a passing apoplexy had arrested his words--the girls entered, and made their salutations.
‘If I had the honour of knowing you longer, Miss Costigan,’ said Miss O’Shea--for it was thus she translated the name Kostalergi--‘I’d ask you why you couldn’t dress like your cousin Kate. It may be all very well in the house, and it’s safe enough here, there’s no denying it; but my name’s not Betty if you’d walk down Kilbeggan without a crowd yelling after you and calling names too, that a respectable young woman wouldn’t bargain for; eh, Mathew, is that true?’
‘There’s the dinner-bell now,’ said Mathew; ‘may I offer my arm?’
‘It’s thin enough that arm is getting, Mathew Kearney,’ said she, as he walked along at her side. ‘Not but it’s time, too. You were born in the September of 1809, though your mother used to deny it; and you’re now a year older than your father was when he died.’
‘Will you take this place?’ said Kearney, placing her chair for her. ‘We ‘re a small party to-day. I see Dick does not dine with us.’
‘Maybe I hunted him away. The young gentlemen of the present day are frank enough to say what they think of old maids. That’s very elegant, and I’m sure it’s refined,’ said she, pointing to the mass of fruit and flowers so tastefully arranged before her. ‘But I was born in a time when people liked to see what they were going to eat, Mathew Kearney, and as I don’t intend to break my fast on a stockgilly-flower, or make a repast of raisins, I prefer the old way. Fill up my glass whenever it’s empty,’ said she to the servant, ‘and don’t bother me with the name of it. As long as I know the King’s County, and that’s more than fifty years, we’ve been calling Cape Madeira, Sherry!’
‘If we know what we are drinking, Miss O’Shea, I don’t suppose it matters much.’
‘Nothing at all, Mathew. Calling you the Viscount Kilgobbin, as I read a while ago, won’t confuse me about an old neighbour.’
‘Won’t you try a cutlet, godmother?’ asked Kate hurriedly.
‘Indeed I will, my dear. I don’t know why I was sending the man away. I never saw this way of dining before, except at the poorhouse, where each poor creature has his plateful given him, and pockets what he can’t eat.’ And here she laughed long and heartily at the conceit.