The gentleman smiled. “I was educated in the English College of Cambridge.”
“Well,” says Mat, “and may be you would be as well off if you had picked up your larnin' in our own Thrinity; there's good picking in Thrinity, for gentlemen like you, that are sober, and harmless about the brains, in regard of not being overly bright.”
“You talk with contempt of a hedge-school,” replied the other master. “Did you never hear, for all so long as you war in Cambridge, of a nate little spot in Greece called the groves of Academus?
“'Inter lucos Academi quarrere verum.'
“What was Plato himself but a hedge schoolmaster? and, with humble submission, it casts no slur on an Irish tacher to be compared to him, I think. You forget also, sir, that the Dhruids taught under their oaks: eh?”
“Ay,” added Mat, “and the Tree of Knowledge, too. Faith, an' if that same tree was now in being, if there wouldn't be hedge schoolmasters, there would be plenty of hedge scholars, any how—particularly if the fruit was well tasted.”
“I believe, Millbank, you must give in,” said Squire Johnston. “I think you have got the worst of it.”
“Why,” said Mat, “if the gintleman's not afther bein' sacked clane, I'm not here.”
“Are you a mathematician?” inquired Mat's friend, determined to follow up his victory; “do you know Mensuration?”
“Come, I do know Mensuration,” said the Englishman, with confidence.