‘Why should he? Didn’t he know where he was? Do you imagine that O’Connell was going to do like poor Lord Killeen, who shipped a cargo of coalscuttles to Africa?’
‘Will you explain to me then how, if you are so much shrewder and wittier and cleverer than us, it does not make you richer, more prosperous, and more contented?’
‘I could do that too—but I’m losing the birds. There’s a cock now. Well done! I see you can shoot a bit.—Look here, major, there’s a deal in race—in the blood of a people. It’s very hard to make a light-hearted, joyous people thrifty. It’s your sullen fellow, that never cuts a joke, nor wants any one to laugh at it, that’s the man who saves. If you’re a wit, you want an audience, and the best audience is round a dinner-table; and we know what that costs. Now, Ireland has been very pleasant for the last hundred and fifty years in that fashion, and you, and scores of other low-spirited, depressed fellows, come over here to pluck up and rouse yourselves, and you go home, and you wonder why the people who amused you were not always as jolly as you saw them. I’ve known this country now nigh sixty years, and I never knew a turn of prosperity that didn’t make us stupid; and, upon my conscience, I believe, if we ever begin to grow rich, we’ll not be a bit better than yourselves.’
‘That would be very dreadful,’ said the other, in mock-horror.
‘So it would, whether you mean it or not.—There’s a hare missed this time!’
‘I was thinking of something I wanted to ask you. The fact is, Kearney, I have a thing on my mind now.’
‘Is it a duel? It’s many a day since I was out, but I used to know every step of the way as well as most men.’
‘No, it’s not a duel!’
‘It’s money, then! Bother it for money! What a deal of bad blood it leads to. Tell me all about it, and I’ll see if I can’t deal with it.’
‘No, it’s not money; it has nothing to do with money. I’m not hard up. I was never less so.’