"H—m," said Mrs. Townsend, meaning to signify thereby that she was still strong in the strength of her own impossibilities.
"And then there was a little general conversation about the potato, for no one came in for a quarter of an hour or so. The priest said that they were as badly off in Limerick and Clare as we are here. Now, I don't believe that; and when I asked him how he knew, he quoted the 'Freeman.'"
"The 'Freeman,' indeed! Just like him. I wonder it wasn't the 'Nation.'" In Mrs. Townsend's estimation, the parish priest was much to blame because he did not draw his public information from some newspaper specially addicted to the support of the Protestant cause.
"And then Somers came in, and he took the chair. I was very much afraid at one time that Father Barney was going to seat himself there."
"You couldn't possibly have stood that?"
"I had made up my mind what to do. I should have walked about the room, and looked on the whole affair as altogether irregular,—as though there was no chairman. But Somers was of course the proper man."
"And who else came?"
"There was O'Leary, from Boherbue."
"He was another Papist?"
"Oh, yes; there was a majority of them. There was Greilly, the man who has got that large take of land over beyond Banteer; and then Father Barney's coadjutor came in."