“Of coorse,” said the lad, echoing him, and laying a stress upon the word, which did not much elevate the meaning of the compliance in general with the rite in question.
“Oh!” exclaimed the priest, recognizing him when he approached—“you are Dan Fagan's son, and designed for the church yourself; you are a good Latinist, for I remember examining you in Erasmus about two years ago—Quomodo sehabet corpus tuum, charum lignum sacredotis”
“Valde, Domine,” replied the lad, “Quomodo se habet anima tua, charum exemplar sacerdotage, et fulcrum robustissium Ecclesiae sacrosancte?”
“Very good, Harry,” replied his Reverence, laughing—“stand aside; I'll hear you after Kelly.”
He then called up a man with a long melancholy face, which he noticed before to have been proof against his joke, and after making two or three additional and fruitless experiments upon his gravity, he commenced a cross fire of peevish interrogatories, which would have excluded him from the “tribunal” on that occasion, were it not that the man was remarkably well prepared, and answered the priest's questions very pertinently.
This over, he repaired to his room, where the work of absolution commenced; and, as there was a considerable number to be rendered sinless before the hour of dinner, he contrived to unsin them with an alacrity that was really surprising.
Immediately after the conversation already detailed between his Reverence and Phaddhy, the latter sought Katty, that he might communicate to her the unlucky oversight which they had committed, in neglecting to provide fresh meat and wine. “We'll be disgraced forever,” said Phaddhy, “without either a bit of mutton or a bottle of wine for the gintlemen, and that big thief Parrah More Slevin had both.”
“And I hope,” replied Katty, “that you're not so mane as to let any of that faction outdo you in dacency, the nagerly set? It was enough for them to bate us in the law-shoot about the horse, and not to have the laugh agin at us about this.”
“Well, that same law-shoot is not over with them yet,” said Phaddhy; “wait till the spring fair comes, and if I don't have a faction gathered that'll sweep them out of the town, why my name's not Phaddhy! But where is Matt till we sind him off?”
“Arrah, Phaddhy,” said Katty, “wasn't it friendly of Father Philemy to give us the hard word about the wine and mutton?”