“A charming person,” said I.
“I wish you heard him in the coort, sir. By my conscience, a witness has a poor time under him! He 'd humbug you if you was an archbishop.”
“Call me at five,” said I, passing up the stairs, and impatient to gain my room and be alone with my indignation.
I passed a restless, feverish night, canvassing with myself whether I would not turn back and leave forever a country whose first aspect was so forbidding and unpromising. What stories had I not heard of Irish courtesy to strangers,—Irish wit and Irish pleasantry! Was this, then, a specimen of that captivating manner which makes these people the French of Great Britain? Why, this fellow was an unmitigated savage!
Having registered a vow not to open my lips to a stranger till I reached the end of my journey, and to affect deafness rather than be led into conversation, I set off the next day, by train, for Derry. True to my resolve, I only uttered the word “beer” till I arrived in the evening. The next day I took the steamer to a small village called Cushnagorra, from whence it was only ten miles by a good mountain-road to Killyrotherum Bay. I engaged a car to take me on, and at last found myself able to ask a few questions without the penalty of being cross-examined by an impertinent barrister, and being made the jest of a coffee-room.
I wanted to learn something about the people to whose house I was going, and asked Pat, accordingly, if he knew Mr. Dudgeon.
“Troth I do, sir, well,” said he.
“He's a good kind of man, I'm told,” said I.
“He is, indeed, sir; no betther.”
“Kind to the poor, and charitable?”