'Quid vetat ridentem dicere verum!'
as Horace says to Maecenas, in the first of the Sathirs.”
“There, Mr. Kavanagh, is the price of a suit of clothes for him.”
“Michael, will you rise up, sir, and make the gintleman a bow? he has given you the price of a shoot of clothes, ma bouchal.”
Michael came up with a very tattered coat hanging about him; and, catching his forelock, bobbed down his head after the usual manner, saying—“Musha yarrah, long life to your honor every day you rise, an' the Lord grant your sowl a short stay in purgatory, wishin' ye, at the same time, a happy death aftherwards!”
The gentleman could not stand this, but laughed so heartily that the argument was fairly knocked up.
It appeared, however, that Squire Johnston did not visit Mat's school from mere curiosity.
“Mr. Kavanagh,” said he, “I would be glad to have a little private conversation with you, and will thank you to walk down the road a little with this gentleman and me.”
When the gentlemen and Mat had gone ten or fifteen yards from the school door, the Englishman heard himself congratulated in the following phrases by the scholars:—
“How do you feel afther bein' sacked, gintleman? The masther sacked you! You're a purty scholar! It's not you, Mr. Johnston, it's the other. You'll come to argue agin, will you? Where's your head, Bah! Come back till we put the suggaun* about your neck. Bah! You now must go to school to Cambridge agin, before you can argue an Irisher! Look at the figure he cuts! Why duv ye put the one foot past the other, when ye walk, for? Bah! Dunce!”