“Something more!—on my conscience I think it does. See now, it’s four days and a half travelling the same journey.”
A burst of laughter irrepressible met this speech, for scarcely any one of the party had not had personal experience of the short distance alluded to.
“You may laugh as much as you please,—you’re welcome to your fun; but I went the road myself, and I ‘d like to see which of you would say I did n’t.”
There was no mistaking the tone nor the intention of the speech; it was said without any elevation of voice or any bravado of manner, but with the quiet, easy determination of a man who only asked reasonable grounds for an opportunity to blow some other gentleman’s brains out. Some disclaimed all idea of a contradiction, others apologized for the mirth at the great disparity of the two statements,—one alleging an hour for what another said four days were required; while I, anxious to learn the Irishman’s explanation, timidly hinted a desire to hear more of his travelling experiences.
He acceded to my wish with as much readiness as he would probably have done had I made overtures of battle, and narrated the following short incident, which, for memory’s sake, I have called
“MR. BLAKE IN BELGIUM.”
“I was persuaded,” quoth Mr. Blake,—“I was persuaded by my wife that we ought to go and live abroad for economy,—that there would be no end to the saving we ‘d make by leaving our house in Galway, and taking up our residence in France or Belgium. First, we ‘d let the place for at least six hundred a year,—the garden and orchard we set down for one hundred; then we ‘d send away all the lazy ‘old hangers on,’ as my wife called them, such as the gatekeepers and gardeners and stable boys. These, her sister told her, were ‘eating us up’ entirely; and her sister was a clever one too,—a widow woman that had lived in every part of the globe, and knew all the scandal of every capital in Europe, on less than four hundred a year. She told my wife that Ireland was the lowest place at all; nobody would think of bringing up their family there; no education, no manners, and, worst of all, no men that could afford to marry. This was a home-stroke, for we had five grown-up girls.
“‘My dear,’ said she, ‘you’ll live like the Duchess of Sutherland, abroad, for eight hundred a year; you ‘ll have a beautiful house, see company, keep your carriage and saddle horses, and drink Champagne every day of the week, like small beer; then velvets and lace are to be had for a song; the housemaids wear nothing but silk;’ in fact, from my wife down to little Joe, that heard sugar candy was only a penny an ounce, we were all persuaded there was nothing like going abroad for economy.
“Mrs. Fitzmaurice—that was my sister-in-law’s name—explained to us how there was nothing so expensive as Ireland.
“‘‘T is not, my dear,’ said she, ‘that things are not cheap; but that’s the reason it’s ruinous to live here. There’s old Molly the cook uses more meat in a day than would feed a foreign family for a month. If you want a beefsteak, you must kill a heifer. Now abroad you just get the joint you want, to the very size you wish,—no bone, if you don’t ask for it. And look at the waste. In the stables you keep eight horses, and you never have a pair for the carriage. The boys are mounted; but you and the girls have nothing to drive out with. Besides, what can you do with that overgrown garden? It costs you £50 a year, and you get nothing out of it but crab-apples and cabbages. No, no; the Continent is the place; and as for society, instead of old Darcy, of Ballinamuck, or Father Luke, for company, you ‘ll have Prince this, and Count that, foreign ministers and plenipotentiaries, archdukes, and attachés without end. There will be more stars round your dinner-table than ever you saw in the sky on a frosty night And the girls. I would n’t wonder if the girls, by giving a sly hint that they had a little money, might n’t marry some of the young Coburgs.’