“Oh, did you?” said Cashel, with a very peculiar look of knowingness.
“Yes; you are aware, Mr. Cashel,” interrupted Jones, “our friend is n't much used to that kind of thing. I suppose it's some years since he has had so much knocking about as in these last few days.”
“I fancy so,” said Cashel, with a significant smile that puzzled the lawyer exceedingly, and he ate on without making a further remark.
The two or three efforts made by Jones and Softly to converse together were, like nearly all similar attempts at perfect ease and self-possession, complete failures, and gradually slided down into monosyllables, and then to silence; when Cashel, who seemed to be enjoying his venison and Bordeaux with perfect zest, leaned back in his chair and said, “What kind of place is this same good city of Dublin? What goes forward here?”
As this question was more directly addressed to Jones, that gentleman prepared himself, not unwillingly, for an elaborate reply.
“Dublin, Mr. Cashel,” said he, pretty much in the same tone he would have used in opening an address to a jury,—
“Dublin is a city which, from a great variety of causes, will always be exposed to every variable and opposing criticism. To begin: it is provincial—”
“Is it slow?” interrupted Cashel, who had listened to this exordium with palpable signs of impatience.
“If you mean, has it its share of those habits of dissipation, those excesses so detrimental alike to health and fortune—”
“No, no; I merely ask what goes on here,—how do people amuse themselves?” said Cashel, fencing to avoid any very lengthened exposure of the other's views.