"No," I replied. "It would have been well for me if I had done so."
We both lapsed into a brown study.
"It is not easy for us priests to take advice," he said at last; "I suppose our functions are so magisterial that we cannot understand even the suggestion of inferiority in reproof. Was it not Dean Stanley who said that the Anglican clergy are polished into natural perfection by domestic interchanges of those silent corrections that are so necessary, and that it is the absence of these correctives that accounts for the so many nodes and excrescences of our social characteristics?"
"True. But we won't take correction. Or rather, no one dare give it. The Bishop can and will; but then a word from a bishop smites like a Nasmyth hammer, and he is necessarily slow of reproof. A Parish priest nowadays dare not correct a curate—"
"I beg pardon, sir," Father Letheby said; "I am sure you'll do me an infinite favor if you kindly point out my many imprudences and inconsistencies."
"And you'll take it well?"
"Well," he said dubiously, "I won't promise that I shall not be nettled. But I'll take it respectfully."
"All right. We'll commence this moment. Give up that coffee-drinking, and take an honest glass of punch."
He laughed in his own musical way. He knew the anguish that coffee had cost Hannah. She had taken to Father Letheby wonderfully. He had found for her a new brand of snuff, and had praised her cooking. And lo! a miracle. Hannah, the Parish priest's housekeeper, had actually gone down and visited his servant. It was a tremendous condescension, involving a great deal of thought. But there was a new alliance,—dual again; it is almost like the kaleidoscopic changes of European politicians. Then for several days there were conferences and colloguings, the result being that, as a reward of humility, which indeed always brings its reward even in this world, Hannah has her house furnished à la mode, and has learned the science of coffee-making,—a science little known as yet in Ireland. Of course, there have been crosses. It is not pleasant, when a brother priest comes in, to see him stand in amazement and appear quite distracted whilst his politeness will not allow him to demand explanations. And when a more demonstrative character shouts Hallo! when he comes into your parlor, and vents his surprise in a prolonged whistle, and looks at you curiously when your attention is engaged, it is slightly embarrassing. Then, again, I'm told that the villagers are making sarcastic remarks about my little ménage: "Begor, Hannah won't be left a pinny"; or, "Begor, Kilronan is looking up"; or, "Begor, he'll be expecting an incrase of the jues"; and one old woman, who gets an occasional letter from America with an enclosure, is quite sure I have embezzled her money, and she comes to the door three times a week with—"that little letther, your reverence? Sure, I don't begredge it to you. You're welcome to it over and over again; but whin 't is convanient, sure you won't see me wantin'? But sure, Mary will think it quare that I never wrote to thank her." I have given up protesting that I have received no letter lately from Mary; but the "purty boys" down at the forge have set the poor woman crazy. "Yerra, where 'ud he get de money for all them grand tings he has?" "Yerra, Kate, you'll never see dat post-office order." "Write to the Bishop, 'oman, and he'll see you rightified." And then, to crown all, comes the bill, just double what I expected. But it is wonderful how many extras there were, and how wages and the price of material went up. Alas! my little deposit of fifty pounds, which was to secure a few masses after my death, where is it? And poor old Hannah? Well, she'll have it all after my death, and that will make her doubly careful, and me—doubly miserable.
"Now," I said to Father Letheby, as he daintily balanced his spoon over his cup, and I leisurely stirred the sugar in,—well, no matter, "I don't like that coffee. It is not sociable. It makes you too cautious, while we, under the potent and expanding influence of native manufacture, are inclined to develop. Now, if you want to succeed in life, give up that Turkish drug and do what all your predecessors did."