"Well, I'd say it was the best we had yet," said the Doctor. "I'd undertake to pull a puppy through distemper with it."
"That's the soup she has always for th'assizes," said James. "Grand soup it is, and I declare to ye, she makes it out of egg shells and every old rubbish!"
The young lady's mother emitted a short laugh, but her empty soup-plate told heavily against her.
The meal wore slowly on. A sea fish, of a genus unknown to me, and amazingly endowed with bones, was consumed in distracted silence.
"I hear you have a fish shop opened in Ballinagar, Mrs. M'Evoy," remarked the Doctor, taking his last fish bone out of action with professional adroitness, and addressing the mother of the young lady, "That's very up-to-date. There wasn't one I met from Ballinagar but was bragging of it."
"It was the Hoolahanes that had it," said Mrs. M'Evoy. "It's closed."
"Oh dear, why so?" said the Doctor. "Why did they do that, I wonder?"
"They said that morning, noon, and night people were bothering them for fish," returned Mrs. M'Evoy, to whom this triumph of the artistic temperament presented no exceptional feature.
"Unless it might be on a fast day, I'd never ask to taste a bit of fish," remarked James, giving a helping hand to the conversation. "There was a man I knew from this place got his death in Liverpool from a bit of fish. It stuck to the upper gum. 'Bill,' says he to the one that was with him, 'so help me God,' says he, 'I'm dyin',' says he; and sure that's how he met his death! It was in some grand hotel he was, and he was too shy to give the puff to send out the bit."
"I'd like to send that to the 'B.M.J.'," said the Doctor gravely. "Maybe you could give me the man's name, James?"