“Well—ahem!—he gave us a new and original version of A Strange Adventure with a Phaeton.” And the little man chuckled at his wit.
“I know the story,” said Father O’Dowd. “It is one of Peter’s favorites, and it takes Peter to tell it.”
“From the phaeton he plunged into Home Rule.”
“Freddy,” addressing me, “you must get Peter to tell our English friend here the story of how ‘ould Casey done Dochther Huttle out av a guinea’; it’s racy of the soil.”
“There are—ahem!—some words of his that I cannot exactly follow. They are Irish, but they have quite a Saxon ring about them, which evidently shows the affinity in the languages.”
“And a further reason for uniting us. You English will never rest content until a causeway is built between Kingstown and Holyhead, garrisoned for the whole sixty miles by a Yorkshire or Shropshire regiment—one that can be depended upon.”
“That idea has been mooted in the House before now; I mean the—ahem!—connection of the two countries by a tunnel.”
“So you would bind us in the dark, Mr. Hawthorne?”
“Ha! ha! ha! Father O’Dowd, that is so good that I must book it here,” tapping his forehead in a ghastly way. “Don’t be surprised if it is heard in the House. We are very witty there.”
“If there is any wit in the House of Commons we send it to you. But I doubt if there is a sparkle of repartee among all the Irish members even. I’ve seen a French mot rehashed, with the epigram left out in the cold, and an Irish story with the point striking somewhere in Tipperary.”