“Half an hour even, breaks a day,” said James, “and what is worse, it unsettles the mind for work; and we ought to be very careful of any return to the old habit, that has destroyed many of us, body and soul, and made the name of an Irishman a by-word and a reproach, instead of a glory and an honour. A penny, Andrew, breaks the silver shilling into coppers; and twopence will buy half a stone of potatoes—that’s a consideration. If we don’t manage to keep things comfortable at home, the women won’t have the heart to mend the coat. Not,” added James with a sly smile, “that I can deny having taken to TEMPERANCE CORDIALS myself.”
“You!” shouted Andrew, “you, and a pretty fellow you are to be blaming me, and then forced to confess you have taken to them yourself. But I suppose they’ll wear no hole in your coat? Oh, to be sure not, you are such a good manager!”
“Indeed,” answered James, “I was anything but a good manager eighteen months ago: as you well know, I was in rags, never at my work of a Monday, and seldom on Tuesday. My poor wife, my gentle patient Mary, often bore hard words; and though she will not own it, I fear still harder blows, when I had driven away my senses. My children were pale, half-starved, naked creatures, disputing a potato with the pig my wife tried to keep to pay the rent, well knowing I would never do it. Now——”
“But the cordial, my boy!” interrupted Andrew, “the cordial!—sure I believe every word of what you’ve been telling me is as true as gospel; ain’t there hundreds, ay, thousands, at this moment on Ireland’s blessed ground, that can tell the same story. But the cordial! and to think of your never owning it before: is it ginger, or anniseed, or peppermint?”
“None of these—and yet it’s the rale thing, my boy.”
“Well, then,” persisted Andrew, “let’s have a drop of it; you’re not going, I’m sure, to drink by yerself—and as I’ve broke the afternoon”——
A very heavy shadow passed over James’s face, for he saw that there must have been something hotter than even ginger in the “temperance cordial,” as it is falsely called, that Andrew had taken, or else he would have endeavoured to redeem lost time, not to waste more; and he thought how much better the REAL temperance cordial was, that, instead of exciting the brain, only warms the heart.
“No,” he replied after a pause, “I must go and finish what I was about; but this evening at seven o’clock meet me at the end of our lane, and then I’ll be very happy of your company.”
Andrew was sorely puzzled to discover what James’s cordial could be, and was forced to confess to himself that he hoped it would be different from what he had taken that afternoon, which certainly had made him feel confused and inactive.
At the appointed hour the friends met in the lane.