At six o’clock I had the pleasure of presenting the worthy Doctor Finucane to our mess, taking at the same time an opportunity, unobserved by him, to inform three or four of my brother officers that my friend was really a character, abounding in native drollery, and richer in good stories than even the generality of his countrymen.
Nothing could possibly go on better than the early part of the evening. Fin, true to his promise, never once alluded to what I could plainly perceive was ever uppermost in his mind, and what with his fund of humour, quaintness of expression, and quickness at reply, garnished throughout by his most mellifluous brogue, the true “Bocca Corkana,” kept us from one roar of laughter to another. It was just at the moment in which his spirits seemed at their highest, that I had the misfortune to call upon him for a story, which his cousin Father Malachi had alluded to on the ever-memorable evening at his house, and which I had a great desire to hear from Fin’s own lips. He seemed disposed to escape telling it, and upon my continuing to press my request, drily remarked,
“You forget, surely, my dear Mr. Lorrequer, the weak condition I’m in; and these gentlemen here, they don’t know what a severe illness I’ve been labouring under lately, or they would not pass the decanter so freely down this quarter.”
I had barely time to throw a mingled look of entreaty and menace across the table, when half-a-dozen others, rightly judging from the Doctor’s tone and serio-comic expression, that his malady had many more symptoms of fun than suffering about it, called out together—
“Oh, Doctor, by all means, tell us the nature of your late attack—pray relate it.”
“With Mr. Lorrequer’s permission I’m your slave, gentlemen,” said Fin, finishing off his glass.
“Oh, as for me,” I cried, “Dr. Finucane has my full permission to detail whatever he pleases to think a fit subject for your amusement.”
“Come then, Doctor, Harry has no objection you see; so out with it, and we are all prepared to sympathise with your woes and misfortunes, whatever they be.”
“Well, I am sure, I never could think of mentioning it without his leave; but now that he sees no objection—Eh, do you though? if so, then, don’t be winking and making faces at me; but say the word, and devil a syllable of it I’ll tell to man or mortal.”
The latter part of this delectable speech was addressed to me across the table, in a species of stage whisper, in reply to some telegraphic signals I had been throwing him, to induce him to turn the conversation into any other channel.