“Do you know I’ve bin fig’rin’ to myself on that convent business,” The O’Mahony mused aloud, after a time, “an’ I guess I’ve pritty well sized it up. The O’Mahonys started that thing, accordin’ to my notion, jest to coop up their sisters in, where board and lodgin’ ’ud come cheap, an’ one suit o’ clothes ’ud last a lifetime, in order to leave more money for themselves for whisky. I ain’t sayin’ the scheme ain’t got some points about it. You bar out all that nonsense about bonnets an’ silk dresses an’ beads an’ fixin’s right from the word go, and you’ve got ’em safe under lock an’ key, so ’t they can’t go gallivantin’ round an’ gittin’ into scrapes. But I’ll be dodrotted if I’m goin’ to set still an’ see ’em capture that little gal Katie agin her will. You hear me! An’ another thing, I’m goin’ to put my foot down about goin’ to church every mornin’. Once a week’s goin’ to be my ticket right from now. An’ you needn’t show up any oftener yourself if you don’t want to. It’s high time we had it out whether it’s me or O’Daly that’s runnin’ this show.”
“Sure, rightly spakin’, your honor’s own sowl wouldn’t want no more than a mass aich Sunday,” expounded Jerry, concentrating his thoughts upon the whole vast problem of dogmatic theology. “But this is the throuble of it, you see, sir: there’s the sowls of all thim other O’Mahonys that’s gone before, that the nuns do be prayin’ for to git out of purgatory, an’—”
“That’s all right,” broke in The O’Mahony, “but my motto is: let every fellow hustle for himself. They’re on the spot, wherever it is, an’ they’re the best judges of what they want; an’ if they ain’t got sand enough to sail in an’ git it, I don’t see why I should be routed up out of bed every mornin’ at seven o’clock to help ’em. To tell the truth, Jerry, I’m gittin’ all-fired sick of these O’Mahonys. This havin’ dead men slung at you from mornin’ to night, day in an’ day out, rain or shine, would have busted up Job himself.”
“I’m thinking, sir,” said Jerry, with a merry twinkle in his eyes, “there’s no havin’ annything in this worruld without payin’ for that same. ’Tis the pinalty of belongin’ to a great family. Egor, since O’Daly thranslated me into a MacEgan I’ve had no pace of me life, by rayson of the necessity to demane mesilf accordin’.”
“Why, darn it all, man,” pursued the other, “I can’t do a solitary thing, any time of day, without O’Daly luggin’ up what some old rooster did a thousand years ago. He follows me round like my shadow, blatherin’ about what Dermid of the Bucking Horses did, an’ what Conn of the Army Mules thought of doin’ and didn’t, and what Finn of the Wall-eyed Pikes would have done if he could, till I git sick at my stomach. He won’t let me lift my ‘finger to do anything, because The O’Mahony mustn’t sile his hands with work, and I have to stand round and watch a lot of bungling cusses pretend to do it, when they don’t know any more about the work than a yellow dog.”
“Faith, ye’ll not get much sympathy from the gintry of Ireland on that score,” said Jerry.
“An’ then that Malachy—he gives me a cramp! he ain’t got a grin in his whole carcass, an’ he can’t understand a word that I say, so that O’Daly has that for another excuse to hang around all the while. Take my steer, Jerry; if anybody leaves you an estate, you jest inquire if there’s a bard and a hereditary dumb waiter that go with it; an’ if there is, you jest sashay off somewhere else.”
“Ah, sir, but an estate’s a great thing.”
“Yes—to tell about. But now jest look at the thing as she stands. I’m the O’Mahony an’ all that, an’ I own more land than you can shake a stick at; but what does it all come to? Why, when the int’rest is paid, I am left so poor that if churches was sellin’ at two cents apiece, I couldn’t buy the hinge on a contribution box. An’ then it’s downright mortifyin’ to me to have to git a livin’ by takin’ things away from these poverty-stricken devils here. I’m ashamed to look ’em in the face, knowin’ as I do how O’Daly makes ’em whack up pigs, an’ geese, an’ chickens, an’ vegetables, an’ fish, not to mention all the money they can scrape together, just to keep me in idleness. It ain’t fair. Every time one of ’em comes in, to bring me a peck o’ peas, or a pail o’ butter, or a shillin’ that he’s managed to earn somewhere, I say to myself: ‘Ole hoss, if you was that fellow, and he was loafin’ round as The O’Mahony, you’d jest lay for him and kick the whole top of his head off, and serve him darned well right, too.’”
Jerry looked at his master now with a prolonged and serious scrutiny, greatly differing from his customary quizzical glance.