"Arrah," quoth Treacle, "but it does signify, and a great deal too, Mr Frenche, for to tell you the honest thrute, I am tired of this neighbourhood; and what most people might think equally unpleasant,—the neighbourhood is tired of me."
My uncle looked hard at him, as if he had said, "well, it may be so; but what is all this to me?"
"I don't rightly understand you, Mr Treacle. You have got a fine estate, for Ballywindle is an improving property, if one had plenty of money to lay out on it, and that I know you have; besides, you have a great advantage over the former possessors, in being, as I believe, a Catholic, whereas all the Frenches were Protestants, so I cannot understand why you should not make yourself popular here."
"Why, sir, I never was popular, as you call it, but I was slowly sliding into my place, as the saying is, like a cheese along a bar of soap, for both you and your brother were thought to be poor men, and lost men, and men who had no chance of ever returning to Kilkenny; and them are just the sort of articles to get mouldy and forgotten, like a box of damaged prunes in the back shop, but—and how they found it out, I am sure I cannot tell"—(my mother smiled here)—"but for these two years past, I have had hints, and to spare, that although your brother was dead, you had come alive again, and had bought a large estate, which, for the honour of Ireland, you had also called Ballywindle, in Jamaica, where all the cottiers were black negers, and that you had made a power of money, and had your nephew sent out to you; he that was the sailor, young Master Brail, her ladyship's Hopeful there—and that, in fact, if I did not write out to you my own self (oh, murder, to be trated like a swimming pig, and made to cut my own troat),—if I did not write that you might have the estate again at prime cost, as we say in Cork, with a compliment (the devil burn them, with their compliment!) of all my improvements; that"—Here he looked in my aunt's face with the most laughable earnestness—"Now, what do you think they did say, my lady?"
"Really, Mr Treacle, I cannot form any conception."
"Why, they said that they would nail my two ears, which were long enough (at least so said the notice), to my own hall-door."
Mr Frenche laughed outright.
"Poo, poo, a vagary of the poor fellows. Why, you know our countrymen are fond of a joke, Treacle."
"Joke, did you say? And was it a joke to fire this sugar-plum into the small of my back last market day?" Here he rubbed a part of his body with one hand, by no means answering the description of the small of his back; while in the other he held out a leaden bullet. My mother drew me into the window, unable to restrain her laughter. "Oh, you need not retrate, my dear Mrs Brail, I don't mean to descend to particulars. But," resuming his address to my uncle, "was it a joke to plump that into me, Mr Frenche? But this is all foreign to the subject. One needs must go when the devil drives, so I am come here to fulfil their bidding, and to make you the offer; for the county is too hot to hold the ould plum-splitter, and the aristocracy too cold—so between hot and cold, I am sick of it."
Here he turned himself to one side disconsolately, and pulling out his red bandana, began to wipe the profuse perspiration from his brow.