* In olden time, Irish gentlemen found it occasionally convenient to rest from their labours for six days, and only exhibit their persons on the seventh.
“Never mind,” said the priest, striving to say something pleasant, and comfort the ould master; “it’s a long lane that wants a turn--and luck will come at last. There’s yer two sisters, Sir Thomas--the best catholics in Connemara, and ready to travel any moment that they’re wanted--if the Lord would only mercifully take them to himself. Indeed, they’re too good for this wicked world--and they would be far snugger in the next.”
“Divil a chance there,” says Sir Thomas; “they’re the very counterpart of their mother--the Lord be good to her! an she lived to ninety-seven.”
“Are ye in the lottery the year?” asked the priest. “Arrah, what matter whether I am or not!” said Sir Thomas. “Hav’n’t I been in it since I was a boy, and niver won any thing beyond a blackguard twenty or two? Upon my conscience, I verily believe, if I had been bound to a hatter, people would be born without heads!”
Well, the divil a one could point out the likelihood of luck; and the poor ould gentleman seemed mighty disconsolate.
“Arrah,” says I, “hould up, Sir Thomas--who knows but we’ll get to the sunny side of the hedge yet? There’s Master Dick--and if he would only marry an heiress--”
“Be dad,” says the ould gentleman, “Father Pat, there’s sense in that.” The priest shook his head.
“Because,” returned the priest, “he’s never out of one scrape till he’s into another. And then he’s so captious; if he was in heaven--where the Lord send him in proper time, if possible!--why, he would pick a quarrel with St. Peter.”
“It’s all a flow of spirit,” says the ould man.
“_It’s a flow of spirits_ that causes it generally,” says the priest; “but it’s all your own fault, Sir Thomas, and I often tould ye so. Instead of lettin’ him stick to his larnin’, ye would have him brought up yer own way, ridin’ three times a week to the Clonsallagh hounds, and shooting at chalked men on the barn door through the remainder.”
“Arrah, be quiet,” says the ould gentleman. “Though he’s my son--at laste I have his mother’s word for it--is there a nater horseman within the Shannon? Put Dick Macnamara on the pig-skin with any thing daeent anunder him, and I’ll back him over a sportin’ country for all I’m worth in the world.”