His friends' arguments and illustrations had apparently a depressing effect upon old Felix, and he said with impatience, "Weary on it, man-alive! Sure there's no doubt about what he was manin', at all at all. The question is, have we any call to be takin' him at his word, and spendin' it away from aught 'ud do him a benefit—the buryin' and Masses and such?"
"That might be a diff'rint thing," said Mrs. Carbery.
"I'd scarce think it," said Terence Kilfoyle, "considherin' he'll say no more to make it so. The job's out of his hand, and 'ill stay the way he left it."
"He might ha' changed his mind afore now, for anythin' we can tell," said Mrs. Carbery.
"'Deed, then, he might so, the poor man, Heaven be his bed," said Mrs. Dooley.
"You could ax the priest about it," Tim O'Meara said diffidently, out of the melancholy muteness which it was his habit to maintain.
"That's as much as to say it should go for Masses," said old Felix, clutching at any shred of definite opinion, "for it's on'y in the nathur of things his Riverence 'ud be recommindin' thim."
But Tim shrank away from the shadow of responsibility, protesting, "Och, not at all, not at all. I wasn't as much as sayin' anythin'."
The old man tossed up his chin disgustedly, and meditated gloomily during a brief pause.
"There's no denyin'," he said then, "that poor Mr. Polymathers had a won'erful great opinion of himself over there." He nodded towards Nicholas's corner, and used this periphrasis with a sense that he had taken a precaution against perilously arousing the boy's vanity. "Times and agin last summer he was sayin' to me the lad 'ud do credit to us yet if he had his chances. A pity it 'ud be, he said, if he didn't iver git to school, or maybe College itself. And gave him his books and all. But sure, I dunno would that make it look any the better for us if we was to be grabbin' his bit of money, and we the on'y people he had to see he got fairity after he was gone. Ne'er a word have I agin schoolin' and College if there would be no doubtin' over the matter; but there's some things you can't stand too clear of, like the heels of a kickin' horse. It might have a quare, bad apparance, rael mane; and long sorry I'd be for that. What 'ud you say, now?"