"I know," said Palko; and off he trotted to the priest, whose chief defect and peculiarity consisted not in delivering long sermons, but rather in the rebuking of Master Jock roundly, in the name of the Lord, on this the one occasion in the whole year when he met him face to face, to the intense
delight of the assembled guests, who kept up the joke afterwards till dinner-time. A particular Providence, however, delivered Master Jock from this bitter jest on this occasion, inasmuch as the reverend gentleman had suddenly fallen so ill that he could not perform his duties.
"The dean is here," added Palko, after communicating the sad intelligence.
"Who never knows when to leave off spouting," commented Master Jock. "If he gets hold of us, we must make up our minds to have dinner at supper-time; and he so bombards the ears of God with my praises that even I am ashamed. Let the supplikans complete the service."
The supplikans, be it explained, was a five years' student (counting not from his birth, of course, but from the beginning of his academical course)—a student togatus, as they called it, who ever since he had been immured at college had never set eyes upon a human being. We can, therefore, picture the terror of the worthy youth when he was informed that, within a quarter of an hour, he must preach an edifying discourse for the special benefit of a whole assembly of genteel backsliders.
He would very much have liked to have crawled away into some hole, but they kept much too good an eye upon him for that, and, perceiving his fear and affliction, the unprincipled mob played all sorts of devilries upon him. They sewed his pocket-handkerchief fast to the pocket of his toga, so that he could not pull it out when his nose required its help; they made him believe that the gipsy Vidra was the cantor; and finally contrived to substitute a book on veterinary surgery for his prayer-book.
The poor supplikans, when he perceived that he had carried a cattle-book into the pulpit, was so dumfounded that he could not even remember
with what words the "Our Father" began, so he descended from the preaching-stool again without uttering a word. They had, therefore, to fall back upon the dean, after all; but they bound him down not to preach, but only to pray; and pray he did—for an hour and a half at least. The right reverend gentleman heaped so many blessings upon the Kárpáthy family and all its members, male and female, in ascendenti et descendenti, both in this world and the next, that, whether they lived or died, no very serious misfortune could possibly befall any of them.
All the guests were present at this pious ceremony, for Master Jock made it a point to speak to nobody on his birthday till he had first lifted up his soul to God, and on such occasions there was not a trace on his countenance of any of the feelings that moved him so strongly on ordinary days. When he knelt down to pray, a deep, unaffected devotion was legible in every feature; and when he heard the recapitulation of his merits, he cast down his eyes as if he considered all that he had done in his life so far but a small matter compared with what he might and must do in the future. "God grant me but one more year over and above the many He has already bestowed upon me," he sighed, "and I will make up for my neglect of the rest." But could he reckon upon another year being granted him? Was he sure of another month, or another day, or even of the morrow?
Deeply affected, he quitted the chapel, and it was only the congratulations of his friends that restored him to his usual self.