“Yes,” said Barry, “go where you may throughout the empire, and whenever you meet a red coat you will be right in four cases out of six in putting it down as belonging to an Irishman; that is, provided its precise color and texture are like mine; but you would not be so safe in applying the same rule wherever you chanced to encounter the clear, bright flash of the genuine scarlet.”
“And why?” returned Greaves, with an inquiring air which seemed to be quite at sea upon the subject; although up to that moment, his conversation was such as to lead one to infer that he could scarcely be in the dark upon a subject so generally understood.
“Because,” said Nick, “the Irish are only fit to do the fighting; and that’s always done, you know, by the rank and file.”
This reply, although not over satisfactory to the interrogator, seemed to afford infinite amusement to Big Tom, who, with a perfect sledge hammer of a laugh, exclaimed when Barry had finished:
“Well done Nick, and the divil a betther could it be said if I said it myself.”
This unusual and lively demonstration on the part of O’Brien, seemed to attract the notice of Greaves, who, with the utmost good humor, observed, while glancing in the direction of the bar:
“From Ireland, too, I’ll bet my head!”
“Seven miles out of it,” returned Tom with a slight twinkle of his eye, “and, of coorse, a gintleman so larned as you will be able to tell where that is.”
“Well, for the life of me,” observed Greaves, “I cannot divine what you are at, with your ‘seven miles out,’ but as I’m an Englishman, I suppose that accounts for it.”
“He means by what he has said,” interrupted Barry, “that he is from Connaught, which, for some reason or other, is regarded as seven miles out of Ireland.”