Manassa was thunderstruck, but he managed to ejaculate:
“Who is master here? Who am I, sir?”
Terence looked up, and with a slight twinkle in his eye, said:
“Mathoosaler’s grandfather, I belave, sor!”
Manassa struck his cane upon the ground and cried, angrily: “You are an impudent puppy and blackguard. How dare you address me in that audacious manner? I’m not master, eh? You won’t obey me, eh? I say you shall weed the grass-plots! We’ll see whether you will obey or not. Clarine! Clarine!! Where’s the jade gone? Gadding about, I suppose, as usual. I say you shall weed the grass-plots! Now go, sir, and send Pascal to me. We’ll see whether you will obey me!”
Terence, who had remained upon his knees during this battle of words, now rose to his feet and started off as though he intended to summon Pascal Batistelli; but, instead of doing so, when he was out of sight of his recent antagonist, he entered the arbour and sat down, filled and lighted his pipe, and smoked contentedly. As he did so, he soliloquised:
“A foine, healthy counthry this is to allow a man to live afther he’s lost his wits intoirely. Faith, I belave he was a captain of the big craft at the toime of the flood!”
Manassa walked on through the garden paths, striking now and then with his cane at a flaunting weed, but his mind did not run in one channel very long and his thoughts soon reverted to the coming birthday party.
“I shall be very busy,” he thought, “until this party is over. What could they do without me? I am the only one who knows how things used to be done and how they ought to be done now. I have always been used to lords and ladies. People have no manners at the present day; even our children, although of baronial descent, have but little idea of true gentility. Pascal and Julien appear every day without their regalia, but I insist upon their wearing the badge—the red rosette—when in full evening dress. The degeneracy of the present age is truly most shocking. Why, you would hardly believe they have not even the old coat of arms upon their carriage, and no outriders. Even the footman is dressed like a circus clown, and the coachman looks like an aide-de-camp. Shocking! Shocking!! If only the barony had descended to me. I wonder if it did descend to me.”
Tired out mentally by his exciting controversies, and physically fatigued by his long walk, the old man sank upon a moss-covered stone which lay at the foot of a large tree, whose wide-spreading branches gave a grateful shade. He leaned against the old, worm-eaten, gnarled trunk, and was soon fast asleep.