“Now men,” she said, “In the name of God, let this be the bounds.”
And it was so.
What is more, a few Sundays later, one of the twain, narrating the incident after Mass, said with satisfaction,
“It failed the agent, and it failed the landlord, and it failed the priest; but Lady Mary settled it!”
As a huntsman I knew used to say (relative to puppy-walking), “It’s all a matter o’ taact. I never see the cook yet I couldn’t get over!”
A cousin of my mother’s, whose name, were I to disclose it, would be quickly recognised as that of a distinguished member of a former Conservative administration, and an orator in whom the fires of Bushe and Plunket had flamed anew, once told me that he had occasion to consult Disraeli on some matter in connection with Ireland. He found him lying ill, on a sofa, clad in a gorgeous, flowered dressing-gown, and with a scarlet fez on his ringlets.
“Ah, Ireland, my dear fellow,” he said, languidly, “that damnable delightful country, where everything that is right is the opposite of what it ought to be!”
There was never a truer word; Ireland is a law unto herself and cannot be dogmatised about. Of the older Ireland, at least, it can be said that an appeal to generosity or to courtesy did not often fail. Of the newer Ireland I am less certain. I remember knocking up an old postmaster, after hours, on a Sunday, and asking for stamps, abjectly, and with the apologies that were due.
“Ah then!” said the postmaster, with a decent warmth of indignation that it should be thought he exacted apologies in the matter; “It’d be the funny Sunday that I’d refuse stamps to a lady!”
My other instance, of the newer Ireland, is also of a post-office, this time in a small town that prides itself on its republican principles. A child deposited a penny upon the counter, and said to the lady in charge, “A pinny stamp, please.”