“Sir,” cried Dick, “if you will allow me to take this quarrel on myself I shall feel doubly honoured.”
“’Tis reluctant I am to thrust forward my opinion uncalled for; but if my own father—rest his sowl!—was to offer to cheat me out of a fight, I’d have his life, if he was a thousand times my father,” said Major O’Teague.
“This quarrel is mine, Mr. Sheridan,” said Mr. Long. “You and Major O’Teague will settle the preliminaries in proper fashion. Have you ever been concerned in an affair of this sort before, Major O’Teague, may I ask?”
Major O’Teague staggered back till he was supported by the wainscot. He stared at his questioner.
“Is it Major O’Teague that y’ask the question of?” he said in a whisper that was not quite free from hoarseness. “Is it me—me—ever engaged in an affair of honour?” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. Then he shook his head mournfully and turned his eyes devotionally to the ceiling. “And this is fame!” he murmured. “Oh, my country! this is fame!”
“By the way, sir, what is your country?” asked Mr. Long.
“My father fought at Fontenoy, and my mother was called in her young days the Lily of the Loire, on account of her elegance and simplicity; and if that doesn’t make me an Irishman in the sight of Heaven, you may call me anything you please. But I’ve been mistaken for an Englishman before now,” he added proudly, “and I might have been one too if it hadn’t been for my parentage.”
“An Irish exile. The figure is a pathetic one, sir,” said Mr. Long. “I have met several in France.”
“France was overrun with them, sir. But ’tis not so bad now as it used to be,” said Major O’Teague. “A good many of them have returned to Ireland, and in a short time we’ll hear that Ireland is overrun with her own exiles.”
“We shall be compelled in that case to withdraw our sympathy from them and bestow it upon their country,” said Mr. Long. “We can only sympathise with expatriated patriots who live in banishment. With exiles who refuse to die out of their own country we can have no sympathy.”