I bowed a silent acquiescence, and he went on. “I declare that I believe a Cockney, though he has n't a word of French, is more at home on the Continent than in Ireland.” He paused for some expression of opinion on my part, but I gave none. I filled my glass, and affected to admire the color of the wine, and sipped it slowly, like one thoroughly engaged in his own enjoyments.
“Don't you agree with me?” asked he, fiercely.
“Sir, I have not given your proposition such consideration as would entitle me to say I concur with it or not.”
“That's not it at all!” broke he in, with an insolent laugh; “but you won't allow that you 're a Cockney.”
“I protest, sir,” said I, sternly; “I have yet to learn that I 'm bound to make a declaration of my birth, parentage, and education to the first stranger I sit beside in a coffee-room.”
“No, you 're not,—nothing of the kind,—for it's done for you. It 's done in spite of you, when you open your mouth. Did n't you see the waiter running out of the room with the napkin in his mouth when you tried to say Donegal? Look here, Paul,” said he, drawing his chair confidentially towards my table. “We don't care a rush what you do with your H's, or your W's, either; but, if we can help it, we won't have our national names miscalled. We have a pride in them, and we 'll not suffer them to be mutilated or disfigured. Do you understand me now?”
“Sufficiently, sir, to wish you a very good-night,” said I, rising from the table, and leaving my pint of sherry, of which I had only drunk one glass.
As I closed the coffee-room door, I thought—indeed, I 'm certain—I heard a loud roar of laughter.
“'Who is that most agreeable gentleman I sat next at dinner?” asked I of the waiter.
“Counsellor MacNamara, sir. Isn't he a nice man?”