"It al no pe a Mackintosh, will it?"
"Mackintosh!" exclaimed his jovial friend—"Mackintosh!—why Charley cannot hold the candle to me—no, no, it is the first spun out of—here lend me your lugs," and he laid hold of the Highland man's ear, so as to draw his head half across the table in a most ludicrous fashion. "It is made entirely out of negro wool."
"Necroo wool?" rejoined Rory, lying back in his chair, holding up his hands, and looking to the roof, with a most absurd expression of face, half credulous, half doubting—"wool from tae veritable neger's heads, tid you say?"
"Negro-head wool, Rory, every fibre of it. The last bale I sent home was entirely composed of the autumn shearing of my own people at the Dream—I sent it to some manufacturing friends of mine in Halifax"—and, holding out his sleeve—"there, the Duke of Devonshire patronises it, I assure ye—nothing else will go down next season at Almack's."
"Allmac's?" exclaimed Rory, "to you mean to say it will shoopersede tae forty-second tartan?"
"Ay, and ninety-second too. However, I find it will not take on indigo freely, in consequence of the essential oil."
"Oil!" said Rory; "creeshy prutes."
"So, in consequence, I intend after this to confine the manufacture to black cloth, which will require no dye you know; if you choose to contract, Rory, I will give you half-a-crown per pound for all you can deliver during the next year—or threepence a-fleece—head, I mean—and that is the top of the market for Spanish wool—but it must be clean—free of—you understand?"
By this time I perceived that Dr Tozy and Flamingo were both literati in a small way, whereby one or two amusing mistakes took place on the part of Master Rory Macgregor, who, of all points of the compass, had no pretensions to any kind or description of erudition.
The conversation happened to turn on Irish politics, and Mr Frenche had just remarked that, notwithstanding all the noise and smoke of the demagogues who lived and battened on the disturbances of the country, he believed on his conscience, from what he saw, when he was last in Ireland, that there were very few influential men of respectability or property who countenanced them or their doings.