“Then I forgive Mr. Jyvecote. I take off my hat to him. I congratulate him. O my dear Father Maurice!” exclaimed the artist enthusiastically, “you who live in such tender tranquillity, with the moan of the sea for a lullaby, can know nothing of the ecstatic feeling attendant upon leaving steam fifty miles behind one. It is simply a new, a beatific existence! And so Jocelyn Jyvecote is within ten miles,” he added, more in the tone of a person engaged in thinking aloud than by way of observation.
“Are you acquainted with him?” asked the priest.
“Oh! yes—that is, very slightly.” There was a decided shade of embarrassment in his manner that would have struck an ordinary observer, but the simple-minded clergyman failed to notice it.
“The yoke’s at the doore, yer riverince, an’ if we don’t start at wanst we’ll be bet be the hill beyant Thronig na Coppagh,” shouted Murty Mulligan, thrusting his shock head into the apartment.
“How unfortunately this happens!” exclaimed the priest. “I have not slept out of this cottage for nearly thirty years, and the very night I could have wished to be here I am compelled to go elsewhere. However, Mr. Brown, I shall leave you in good hands, and before I start I must make you acquainted with my housekeeper.”
Murty had returned to the kitchen considerably baffled.
“He’s goin’ for to stop the night, Mrs. Clancy,” he reported to the expectant housekeeper.
“Who’s goin’ for to stop the night?”
“The strange gintleman above.”
“Where is he goin’ for to stop, I’d like for to know? Mrs. Dooly’s childre is down wud maysles. The gauger is billeted at Mooney’s—”