"Och, faith, don't be noticin' the granda', yer honour; himself was beyond to the town this mornin', an' they've riz the price o' porther on him wan ha'penny. He do be as mad as the Sivinteen Divils!"
XVIII
THE REGIMENTAL MASCOT
When his honour the Colonel took the owld rigiment to France, Herself came home bringin' the rigimental mascot with her. A big white long-haired billy-goat he was, the same.
"I'll not be afther lavin' him at the daypo," says Herself; "'tis no place for a domestic animal at all, the language them little drummer-boys uses, the dear knows," says she.
So me bowld mascot he stops up at the Castle and makes free with the flower-beds and the hall and the drawin'-room and the domestic maids the way he'd be the Lord-Lieutenant o' the land, and not jist a plain human Angory goat. A proud arrygent crature it is, be the powers! Steppin' about as disdainy as a Dublin gerrl in Ballydehob, and if, mebbe, you'd address him for to get off your flower-beds with the colour of anger in your mouth he'd let a roar out of him like a Sligo piper with poteen taken, and fetch you a skelp with his horns that would lay you out for dead.
And sorra the use is it of complainin' to Herself.
"Ah, Delaney, 'tis the marshal sperit widin him," she'd say; "we must be patient with him for the sake of the owld rigiment"; and with that she'd start hand-feedin' him with warmed-up sponge cake and playin' with his long silky hair.
"Far be it from me," I says to Mikeen, the herd, "to question the workings o' Providence, but were I the Colonel of a rigiment, which I am not, and had to have a mascot, it's not a raparee billy I'd be afther havin', but a nanny, or mebbe a cow, that would step along dacently with the rigiment and bring ye luck, and mebbe a dropeen o' milk for the orficers' tea as well. If it's such cratures that bring ye fortune may I die a peaceful death in a poor-house," says I.
"I'm wid ye," says Mikeen, groanin', he bein' spotted like a leopard with bruises by rason of him havin' to comb the mascot's silky hair twice daily, and the quick temper of the baste at the tangles.