“From Syntax, Phaddhy.”
“And who was Syntax—do you know, Briney?”
“He was a Roman, Phaddhy, bekase there's a Latin prayer in the beginning of the book.”
“Ay, was he—a priest, I'll warrant him. Well, Briney, do you mind yer Latin, and get on wid yer larnin', and when you grow up you'll have a pair of boots, and a horse of your own (and a good broadcloth black coat, too) to ride on, every bit as good as Father Philemy's, and may be betther nor Father Con's.”
From this point, which usually wound up these colloquies between the father and son, the conversation generally diverged into the more spacious fields of science; so that by the time they reached home, Briney had probably given the father a learned dissertation upon the elevation of the clouds above the earth, and told him within how many thousand miles they approached it, at their nearest point of approximation.
“Katty,” said Phaddhy, when he got home, “we're to have a station here on Thursday next: 'twas given out from the altar to-day by Father Philemy.”
“Oh, wurrah, wurrah!” exclaimed Katty, overwhelmed at the consciousness of her own incapacity to get up a dinner in sufficient style for such guests—“wurrah, wurrah! Phaddhy, ahagur, what on the livin' earth will we do at all at all! Why, we'll never be able to manage it.”
“Arrah, why, woman; what do they want but their skinful to eat and dhrink, and I'm sure we're able to allow them that, any way?”
“Arrah, bad manners to me, but you're enough to vex a saint—'their skinful to eat and dhrink!'—you common crathur you, to speak that way of the clargy, as if it was ourselves or the laborers you war spaking of.”
“Ay, and aren't we every bit as good as they are, if you go to that?—haven't we sowls to be saved as well as themselves?”