There was a pause before Edmund remarked, “Your story of the Montague-Macnamaras and the Capulet-Casheldergs is a sad one, Brian. And you have heard the cry of the young Princess with your own ears, I dare say?”
“That I have, your honour. And it’s the story of the young Princess Fither and her lover that I tell to gentlemen that put their tongues in their cheeks when they’re alone, and thinking of the way the less knowing ones talk of love and the heart of a woman.”
Both Edmund and Harold began to think that perhaps the Irish boatman was a shrewder and a more careful listener than they had given him.
CHAPTER IV.—ON FABLES.
VERY amusing indeed was Edmund’s parody of the boatman’s wildly-romantic story. The travesty was composed for the benefit of Miss Craven, and the time of its communication was between the courses of the very excellent dinner which Lord Innisfail had provided for his numerous guests at his picturesque Castle overlooking Lough Suangorm—that magnificent fjord on the West Coast of Ireland. Lord Innisfail was a true Irishman. When he was away from Ireland he was ever longing to be back in it, and when he was in Ireland he was ever trying to get away from it. The result of his patriotism was a residence of a month in Connaught in the autumn, and the rest of the year in Connaught Square or Monte Carlo. He was accustomed to declare—in England—that Ireland and the Irish were magnificent. If this was his conviction, his self-abnegation, displayed by carefully avoiding both, except during a month every year, was all the greater.
And yet no one ever gave him credit for possessing the virtue of self-abnegation.
He declared—in England—that the Irish race was the finest on the face of the earth, and he invariably filled his Castle with Englishmen.
He was idolized by his Irish tenantry, and they occasionally left a few birds for his guests to shoot on his moors during the latter days of August.