‘Just like a lump,’ said Puddock, briskly.
‘And how is that?’ enquired Devereux.
‘Flay the lump—splat him—divide
him,’ answered Puddock, with great volubility;
’and cut each side into two pieces; season with
salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and baste with clarified
butter; dish him with slices of oranges, barberries,
grapes, gooseberries, and butter; and you will find
that he eats deliriously either with farced pain or
gammon pain.’
This rhapsody, delivered with the rapidity and emphasis
of Puddock’s earnest lisp, was accompanied with
very general tokens of merriment from the company,
and the priest, who half suspected him of having invented
it, was on the point of falling foul of him, when Lord
Castlemallard rose to take leave, and the general
forthwith vacated the chair, and so the party broke
up, fell into groups, and the greater part sauntered
off to the Phoenix, where, in the club-room, they,
with less restraint, and some new recruits, carried
on the pleasures of the evening, which pleasures,
as will sometimes happen, ended in something rather
serious.
SHOWING HOW TWO GENTLEMEN MAY MISUNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER,
WITHOUT ENABLING THE COMPANY TO UNDERSTAND THEIR QUARREL.
Loftus had by this time climbed to the savage lair
of his garret, overstrewn with tattered papers and
books; and Father Roach, in the sanctuary of his little
parlour, was growling over the bones of a devilled-turkey,
and about to soothe his fretted soul in a generous
libation of hot whiskey punch. Indeed, he was
of an appeasable nature, and on the whole a very good
fellow.
Dr. Toole, whom the young fellows found along with
Nutter over the draught-board in the club-room, forsook
his game to devour the story of Loftus’s Lenten
Hymn, and poor Father Roach’s penance, rubbed
his hands, and slapped his thigh, and crowed and shouted
with ecstasy. O’Flaherty, who called for
punch, and was unfortunately prone to grow melancholy
and pugnacious over his liquor, was now in a saturnine
vein of sentiment, discoursing of the charms of his
peerless mistress, the Lady Magnolia Macnamara—for
he was not one of those maudlin shepherds, who pipe
their loves in lonely glens and other sequestered
places, but rather loved to exhibit his bare scars,
and roar his tender torments for the edification of
the market-place.
While he was descanting on the attributes of that
bewitching ‘crature,’ Puddock, not two
yards off, was describing, with scarcely less unction,
the perfections of ‘pig roast with the hair on:’
and the two made a medley like ‘The Roast Beef
of Old England,’ and ’The Last Rose of
Summer,’ arranged in alternate stanzas.
O’Flaherty suddenly stopped short, and said
a little sternly to Lieutenant Puddock—
’Does it very much signify, Sir (or as O’Flaherty
pronounced it “Sorr,”) whether the animal
has hair upon it or not?’
