“Faith! that’s the last thing I thought of, being sure of winning.”
“Then you will not object to any mode of payment I shall propose.”
“None: only remembering always, that I was a bankrupt last week, and shall be little better till I’m married; but then I’ll pay you honestly if I lose.”
“No, if you lose I must be paid before that time, my good sir,” said his brother, laughing. “My bet is this:—I will lay you one hundred guineas that you do not remain four days in England incognito; be upon honour with me, and promise, that if you lose, you will, instead of laying down a hundred guineas, come back immediately, and settle quietly again to business.”
The word business was always odious to our hero’s proud ears; but he thought himself so secure of winning his wager, that he willingly bound himself in a penalty which he believed would never become due; and his generous brother, at parting, made the bet still more favourable, by allowing that Phelim should not be deemed the loser unless he was, in the course of the first four days after he touched English ground, detected eight times in being an Irishman.
“Eight times!” cried Phelim. “Good bye to a hundred guineas, brother, you may say.”
“You may say,” echoed his brother, and so they parted.
Mr. Phelim O’Mooney the next morning sailed from Cork harbour with a prosperous gale, and with a confidence in his own success which supplied the place of auspicious omens. He embarked at Cork, to go by long sea to London, and was driven into Deal, where Julius Caesar once landed before him, and with the same resolution to see and conquer. It was early in the morning; having been very sea-sick, he was impatient, as soon as he got into the inn, for his breakfast: he was shown into a room where three ladies were waiting to go by the stage; his air of easy confidence was the best possible introduction.
“Would any of the company choose eggs?” said the waiter.
“I never touch an egg for my share,” said O’Mooney, carelessly; he knew that it was supposed to be an Irish custom to eat eggs at breakfast; and when the malicious waiter afterwards set a plate full of eggs in salt upon the table, our hero magnanimously abstained from them; he even laughed heartily at a story told by one of the ladies, of an Hibernian at Buxton, who declared that “no English hen ever laid a fresh egg.”