“Neither; a bad cold neglected, and then an old ague on the back of it.”
“And of course the fellows have bled and blistered you, without mercy. My medical skill is borrowed from the stable: hot mashes and double body-clothes are generally enough for a common attack. But rich fellows like you cannot get off so cheaply. And madam—how is she?”
“Perfectly well, thank you. And how are all your friends?”
“As well as men can be who are worried and badgered every hour of the twenty-four. It 's no use in sending Englishmen here, they are never trusted! I don't believe it's possible to find an honester man, nor a truer friend to Ireland, than Portland; but his Saxon blood is quite enough to mar his utility and poison every effort he makes to be of service.”
“The children are paying off the scores of their fathers, Rutledge. The sentiment that has taken some centuries to mature, can scarcely be treated like a mere prejudice.”
“Very true; but what bad policy it is—as policy—to obstruct the flow of concessions, even coming from a suspected channel. It 's rather too hard to criticise them for doing the very things we ask them.”
“I have not looked into a newspaper these few weeks,” said my father, half wearied of the theme.
“So that you know nothing, then, of—” He stopped short, for he just caught himself in time.
“I know nothing whatever of the events that have occurred in that interval; and—however inglorious the confession, Rutledge, I must make it—I 'd almost as soon live over my attack again as hear them. Take it as a sick man's peevishness or sound philosophy, as you may; but, in the jarring, squabbling world we live in, there 's nothing so good as to let bygones be bygones.”
“That's taking for granted that anything is ever a 'bygone,' Walter; but, faith, my experience says that we are feeling, to the end of centuries, the results of the petty mischances that befell us in the beginning of them.”