“I say, Paddy Finn, I hope you and I will be friends,” he continued. “I’ve heard that you Irishmen are frequently quarrelsome, but I hope you won’t quarrel with me, or, for your own sake, with any of the rest of the mess. You’ll gain nothing by it, as they would all turn against you to put you down.”
“No fear of that,” I replied, “always provided that they say nothing insulting of Ireland, or of my family or friends, or of the opinions I may hold, or take liberties which I don’t like, or do anything which I consider unbecoming gentlemen.”
“You leave a pretty wide door open,” remarked Tom; “but, as I said before, if you don’t keep the peace it will be the worse for you.”
We were all this time proceeding at a rapid rate up the stream, between its wooded and picturesque banks. On arriving at Cork, the captain wished the major good-bye, saying that I must be on board again within three days, which would allow me ample time to get a proper uniform made.
I asked Tom Pim what he was going to do with himself, and proposed that, after I had been measured by the tailor, we should take a stroll together.
“Do you think the captain brought me up here for my pleasure?” he said. “I have to stay by the boat while he’s on shore, to see that the men don’t run away. Why, if I didn’t keep my eye on them, they’d be off like shots, and drunk as fiddlers by the time the captain came back.”
“I’m sorry you can’t come,” I said. “By the bye, talking of fiddlers, will you mind taking a fiddle on board to the boy who came with me,—Larry Harrigan? I promised to send it to him, though I didn’t expect so soon to have the opportunity.”
“With the greatest pleasure in the world,” said Tom Pim. “Perhaps I may take a scrape on it myself. When I was a little fellow, I learned to play it.”
“You must have been a very little fellow,” I couldn’t help remarking, though Tom didn’t mind it.
As our inn was not far off, I asked my uncle to let me run on and get the fiddle, and take it down to the boat. As I carried it along, I heard people making various remarks, evidently showing that they took me for a musician or stage-player, which made me more than ever anxious to get out of a costume which I had once been so proud of wearing. Having delivered the violin in its case to Tom Pim, who promised to convey it to Larry, I rejoined my uncle.