Mr. Townsend was, as I have said, the very opposite to Mr. Carter, but he also was a man who could do without the comforts of life, if the comforts of life did not come readily in his way. He liked his glass of whisky punch dearly, and had an idea that it was good for him. Not caring much about personal debts, he would go in debt for whisky. But if the whisky and credit were at an end, the loss did not make him miserable. He was a man with a large appetite, and who took great advantage of a good dinner when it was before him; nay, he would go a long distance to insure a good dinner; but, nevertheless, he would leave himself without the means of getting a mutton chop, and then not be unhappy. Now Mr. Carter would have been very unhappy had he been left without his superfine long black coat.
In tendering his invitation to Mr. Carter, Mr. Townsend had explained that with him the res angusta domi, which was always a prevailing disease, had been heightened by the circumstances of the time; but that of such crust and cup as he had, his brother English clergyman would be made most welcome to partake. In answer to this, Mr. Carter had explained that in these days good men thought but little of crusts and cups, and that as regarded himself, nature had so made him that he had but few concupiscences of that sort. And then, all this having been so far explained and settled, Mr. Carter came.
The first day the two clergymen spent together at Berryhill, and found plenty to employ them. They were now like enough to be in want of funds at that Berryhill soup-kitchen, seeing that the great fount of supplies, the house, namely, of Castle Richmond, would soon have stopped running altogether. And Mr. Carter was ready to provide funds to some moderate extent if all his questions were answered satisfactorily. "There was to be no making of Protestants," he said, "by giving away of soup purchased with his money." Mr. Townsend thought that this might have been spared him. "I regret to say," replied he, with some touch of sarcasm, "that we have no time for that now." "And so better," said Mr. Carter, with a sarcasm of a blunter sort. "So better. Let us not clog our alms with impossible conditions which will only create falsehood." "Any conditions are out of the question when one has to feed a whole parish," answered Mr. Townsend.
And then Mr. Carter would teach them how to boil their yellow meal, on which subject he had a theory totally opposite to the practice of the woman employed at the soup-kitchen. "Av we war to hocus it that, yer riverence," said Mrs. Daly, turning to Mr. Townsend, "the crathurs couldn't ate a bit of it; it wouldn't bile at all, at all, not like that."
"Try it, woman," said Mr. Carter, when he had uttered his receipt oracularly for the third time.
"'Deed an' I won't," said Mrs. Daly, whose presence there was pretty nearly a labour of love, and who was therefore independent. "It'd be a sin an' a shame to spile Christian vittels in them times, an' I won't do it." And then there was some hard work that day; and though Mr. Townsend kept his temper with his visitor, seeing that he had much to get and nothing to give, he did not on this occasion learn to alter his general opinion of his brethren of the English high church.
And then, when they got home, very hungry after their toil, Mr. Townsend made another apology for the poorness of his table. "I am almost ashamed," said he, "to ask an English gentleman to sit down to such a dinner as Mrs. Townsend will put before you."
"And indeed then it isn't much," said Mrs. Townsend; "just a bit of fish I found going the road."
"My dear madam, anything will suffice," said Mr. Carter, somewhat pretentiously. And anything would have sufficed. Had they put before him a mess of that paste of which I have spoken he would have ate it and said nothing,—ate enough of it at least to sustain him till the morrow.
But things had not come to so bad a pass as this at Drumbarrow parsonage; and, indeed, that day fortune had been propitious;—fortune which ever favours the daring. Mrs. Townsend, knowing that she had really nothing in the house, had sent Jerry to waylay the Lent fishmonger, who twice a week was known to make his way from Kanturk to Mallow with a donkey and panniers; and Jerry had returned with a prize.