As though we couldn't count Countesses against you and beat you by chalks! I ain't the man to call hard names, Mr.Neville; but if one of us is upstarts, it's aisy seeing which.

Your uncle's an ould man, and I'm told nigh to his latter end.

I'm not saying but what you should respect even his wakeness.

But you'll not look me in the face and tell me that afther what's come and gone that young lady is to be cast on one side like a plucked rose, because an ould man has spoken a foolish word, or because a young man has made a wicked promise." They were now standing again, and Fred raised his hat and rubbed his forehead as he endeavoured to arrange the words in which he could best propose his scheme to the priest.

He had not yet escaped from the idea that because Father Marty was a Roman Catholic priest, living in a village in the extreme west of Ireland, listening night and day to the roll of the Atlantic and drinking whisky punch, therefore he would be found to be romantic, semi-barbarous, and perhaps more than semi-lawless in his views of life.