“‘But then, talking of gentlemen, I own he is an officer of the 48th, but his father is a fish-tackle seller in John Street, Kilkenny, who keeps a three-halfpenny shop, where you may buy everything from a cheese to a cheese-toaster, from a felt hat to a pair of brogues, from a pound of brown soap to a yard of huckaback towels. He got his commission by his father’s retiring from the Ormonde Interest, and acting as whipper-in to the sham freeholders from Castlecomer; and I am, as you know, of the best blood of the Burkes—straight from the De Burgos themselves—and when I think of that I really do not like to meet this Mr. Brady.’
“‘Do not fight him, by all means,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy.
“‘Why,’ said I, ‘Wooden-Leg, my friend, this is like playing battledore and shuttlecock; what is knocked forward with one hand is knocked back with the other. Come, tell me what I ought to do.’
“‘Well,’ said Wooden-Leg, taking the meerschaum out of his mouth, ‘in dubiis auspice, etc. Let us decide by tossing a halfpenny. If it comes down ‘head,’ you fight—if ‘harp’ you do not. Nothing can be fairer.’
“I assented.
“‘Which,’ said he, ‘is it to be—two out of three, as at Newmarket, or the first toss to decide?’
“‘Sudden death,’ said I, ‘and there will soon be an end of it.’
“Up went the halfpenny, and we looked with anxious eyes for its descent, when, unluckily, it stuck in a gooseberry bush.
“‘I don’t like that,’ said Wooden-Leg Waddy, ‘for it’s a token of bad luck. But here goes again.’