As well as I can remember, it was about a fortnight from the day of our friend Dennis Costigan’s visit to Miles Kavanagh’s cottage, that Watty Colfer (Watty always walks with his head down; mind, his face is an ell longer than any other face, so grave and thoughtful is he!) had just got inside father Tobin’s gate, and closed it after him, when he saw his reverence himself thundering down the avenue on St Patrick, his nag.
“Yer sarvint, sur!” said Watty, very humbly, and hat in hand, and propping himself against the shut gate, “could I make so bould as just to spake one word to yer rivirince?”
“Not one word!” replied the priest hastily, “if you were the bishop! I am in too great a hurry. Lave my way and open the gate.”
“Thin, God help me,” groaned Watty, but still keeping his position, “that am neither priest nor bishop; I haven’t the head-piece for sitch great min; an’ all clargy must have great heads to keep in the larnin’. Now, is it a great weight intirely, sur?”
The priest laughed in spite of his hurry, but as he well knew the man he had to deal with, he checked himself immediately, and assuming as determined a look as possible under the circumstances, he “commanded the slieveen to open the gate for him.”
Watty too knew his man. He knew every variation of the priest’s temper, from its usual lake-like placidity, till it got up to boiling-water heat. He thought it was beginning to “simmer” a little, but far away yet from “bubbling and hissing;” and gratifying his own cool impudence, he continued the process of “heating up.”
“Why, thin, indeed, what I have to say won’t keep ye long, sur.”
“Open the gate this instant!” thundered the priest.
“Sartinly, sur,” quoth Watty, turning quickly round and pretending to be very busy with the gate; “see this boult now! Och! my curse upon the whole corporation ov smiths, includin’ my own dacent uncle who made this same gate, an’ so stiff an’ bad, that all I can do won’t shoot back the boult! A clever workman is a fine thing! An’ so you won’t listen to what I have to say, sur?”