"But isn't dinner nearly ready?" said Mr. Townsend, whose ideas were not so exclusively Protestant as were those of his wife. "I haven't had a morsel since breakfast." And then his wife, who was peculiarly anxious to keep him in a good humour that all might come out about Father Barney, made another little visit to the kitchen.
At last the dinner was served. The weather was very cold, and the rector and his wife considered it more cosy to use only the parlour, and not to migrate into the cold air of a second room. Indeed, during the winter months the drawing-room of Drumbarrow Glebe was only used for visitors, and for visitors who were not intimate enough in the house to be placed upon the worn chairs and threadbare carpet of the dining-parlour. And very cold was that drawing-room found to be by each visitor.
But the parlour was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils. Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays and some other rare occasions, would by no means equal, in point of drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues, delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements, but not equally acceptable to others who may have been less fortunate.
During dinner there was no conversation about Herbert Fitzgerald, or the committee, or Father Barney. The old gardener, who waited at table with all his garden clothes on him, and whom the neighbours, with respectful deference, called Mr. Townsend's butler, was a Roman Catholic; as, indeed, were all the servants at the glebe, and as are, necessarily, all the native servants in that part of the country. And though Mr. and Mrs. Townsend put great trust in their servant Jerry as to the ordinary duties of gardening, driving, and butlering, they would not knowingly trust him with a word of their habitual conversation about the things around them. Their idea was, that every word so heard was carried to the priest, and that the priest kept a book in which every word so uttered was written down. If this were so through the parish, the priest must in truth have had something to do, both for himself and his private secretary; for, in spite of all precautions that were taken, Jerry and Jerry's brethren no doubt did hear much of what was said. The repetitions to the priest, however, I must take leave to doubt.
But after dinner, when the hot water and whisky were on the table, when the two old arm-chairs were drawn cozily up on the rug, each with an old footstool before it; when the faithful wife had mixed that glass of punch—or jug rather, for, after the old fashion, it was brewed in such a receptacle; and when, to inspire increased confidence, she had put into it a small extra modicum of the eloquent spirit, then the mouth of the rector was opened, and Mrs. Townsend was made happy.
"And so Father Barney and I have met at last," said he, rather cheerily, as the hot fumes of the toddy regaled his nostrils.
"And how did he behave now?"
"Well, he was decent enough—that is, as far as absolute behaviour went. You can't have a silk purse from off a sow's ear, you know."
"No, indeed; and goodness knows there's plenty of the sow's ear about him. But now, Æneas, dear, do tell me how it all was, just from the beginning."
"He was there before me," said the husband.