"Come, Miss Feemy," said Mary, "if you and the Captain now would jist sit down, and begin—there's a dear, Miss, do."
"Oh, Mary, nobody must sit down before you, to-night."
"Never mind me, Miss,—if I could only get you and the Captain seated; yer honer," and she turned round with a curtsey to Ussher, "there's Denis and Pat there will do nothing in life to help me!" and the poor woman seemed at her wit's end to know how to arrange her guests.
At last, however, Ussher and Feemy sat down at one side of the priest, Denis and his wife at the other, and by degrees the table got quite full; so much so, that when the boys saw one another taking their seats, they were as eager as before they had been slow; and they hustled each other at the bottom of the table, till they were so crowded that they hadn't room to use their arms. Pat sat at the bottom, and he and the priest emulated each other in the zeal and celerity with which they cut up and distributed the joints before them.
At Pat's end of the table plates were scarce, and the boys round him took the huge lumps of blood-red mutton in their fists, and seemed perfectly independent of such conventional wants as knives and forks, in the ease and enjoyment with which they dispatched their repast. At last Brady had done all to the joint that carving could do, and having kept a tolerably sufficient lion's share for himself, he passed the bone down the table, which was speedily divided into as many portions as nature had intended that it should be.
Matters were conducted in a rather more decorous manner among the aristocrats at Father John's end of the table—though even here they were carried on in a somewhat rapid and voracious fashion. The priest helped Feemy and Ussher, Mary and her husband; and then remarking that he had done all the hard work of the evening, and that he thought it was time to get a bit himself, he filled a moderate plate for his own consumption, and passed the joint down to be treated after the same manner as its fellow.
As long as the eating continued there was not much said; but when the viands had disappeared, and the various bottles came into requisition, the clatter of tongues became loud and joyous; and though the first part of the entertainment had to all appearance come to a rather too speedy termination for want of material to carry it on, there seemed, from the quantity of whiskey produced, little chance of any similar disappointment in what the greater portion of the guests considered the more agreeable part of the entertainment.
"Well, Denis," said Father John, "I believe I've done all I can this time; and as I know you'll want to be looking after the cow that's in calf—no, not the cow, but the pigs—I'll be off."
"Folly on, Father John, folly on; it's always the way with yer riverence—to be making yer game of a poor boy like me! But you're not going out of this till you've dhrunk Mary's health here, and heard a tune on the pipes, any way."
"Not a drop, Denis, thank ye," and Father John got up; "and now, boys and girls, good night, and God bless you—and behave yourselves."