"That they never will be, Peter, while there is what may be called free trade in religion."
"You speak like a Catholic, O'Brien."
"I am one," replied he. And here our conversation ended, for we were close to the boat, which was waiting for us on the beach.
The next day a man-of-war brig arrived from England, bringing letters for the squadron on the station. I had two from my sister Ellen which made me very uncomfortable. She stated that my father had seen my uncle, Lord Privilege, and had had high words with him; indeed, as far as she could ascertain of the facts, my father had struck my uncle, and had been turned out of the house by the servants; that he had returned in a state of great excitement, and was very ill ever since; that there was a great deal of talk in the neighbourhood on the subject, people generally highly blaming my father's conduct, thinking that he was deranged in his intellect—a supposition very much encouraged by my uncle. She again expressed her hopes of my speedy return. I had now been absent nearly three years, and she had been so uncomfortable that she felt as if it had been at least ten. O'Brien also received a letter from Father M'Grath, which I shall lay before the reader:—
"MY DEAR SON,—Long life, and all the blessings of all the saints be upon you now and for evermore! Amen. And may you live to be married, and may I dance at your wedding, and may you never want children, and may they grow up as handsome as their father and their mother (whoever she may hereafter be), and may you die of a good old age, and in the true faith, and be waked handsomely, as your own father was last Friday s'ennight, seeing as how he took it into his head to leave this world for a better. It was a very dacent funeral-procession, my dear Terence, and your father must have been delighted to see himself so well attinded. No man ever made a more handsome corpse, considering how old, and thin, and haggard he had grown of late, and how gray his hair had turned. He held the nosegay between his fingers, across his breast as natural as life, and reminded us all of the blessed saint, Pope Gregory, who was called to glory some hundred years before either you or I was born.
"Your mother's quite comfortable; and there she sits in her ould chair, rocking to and fro all day long, and never speaking a word to nobody, thinking about heaven, I dare to say; which is just what she ought to do, seeing that she stands a very pretty chance of going there in the course of a month or so. Divil a word has she ever said since your father's departure, but then she screamed and yelled enough to last for seven years at the least. She screamed away all her senses anyhow, for she has done nothing since but cough, cough, and fumble at her pater-nosters—a very blessed way to pass the remainder of her days, seeing that I expect her to drop every minute like an over-ripe sleepy pear. So don't think any more about her, my son, for without you are back in a jiffy, her body will be laid in consecrated ground, and her happy, blessed soul in purgatory. Pax vobiscum. Amen! amen!
"And now having disposed of your father and your mother so much to your satisfaction, I'll just tell you that Ella's mother died in the convent at Dieppe, but whether she kept her secret or not I do not know; but this I do know, that if she didn't relieve her soul by confession, she's damned to all eternity. Thanks be to God for all his mercies. Amen! Ella Flanagan is still alive, and, for a nun, is as well as can be expected. I find that she knows nothing at all about the matter of the exchanging the genders of the babbies—only that her mother was on oath to Father M'Dermot, who ought to be hanged, drawn, and quartered instead of those poor fellows whom the government called rebels, but who were no more rebels than Father M'Grath himself, who'll uphold the Pretender, as they call our true Catholic king, as long as there's life in his body or a drop of whiskey left in ould Ireland to drink his health wid.—
"Talking about Father M'Dermot puts me in mind that the bishop has not yet decided our little bit of a dispute, saying that he must take time to think about it. Now, considering that it's just three years since the row took place, the old gentleman must be a very slow thinker not to have found out by this time that I was in the right, and that Father M'Dermot, the baste, is not good enough to be hanged.
"Your two married sisters are steady and diligent young women, having each made three children since you last saw them. Fine boys, every mother's son of them, with elegant spacious features, and famous mouths for taking in whole potatoes. By the powers, but the offsets of the tree of the O'Briens begin to make a noise in the land, anyhow, as you would say if you only heard them roaring for their bit of suppers.
"And now, my dear son Terence, the real purport of this letter, which is just to put to your soul's conscience, as a dutiful son, whether you ought not to send me a small matter of money to save your poor father's soul from pain and anguish—for it's no joke that being in purgatory, I can tell you; and you wouldn't care how soon you were tripped out of it yourself. I only wish you had but your little toe in it, and then you'd burn with impatience to have it out again. But you're a dutiful son, so I'll say no more about it—a nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse.