"Faix then, Father John, you shouldn't spake agin mother Mulready, for she's something like your riverence; and a poor boy with an empty pocket will get neither comfort nor good words from either of ye."
Father John did not think it to be consistent with his dignity to answer this sally; so he returned to the other end of the room, carefully counting as he went, and pocketing the money which he had collected. In the meantime the bride, with such assistance as she could get, had succeeded in putting the supper on the table: a leg of mutton at the top, reclining on a vast bed of cabbage; a similar dish at the bottom; and a ham, with the same garniture, in the middle. The rest of the table was elegantly sprinkled with plates of smoking potatoes; and what knives and forks and spoons and plates could be spared from the head of the table, where a few were laid out with some little order for the more aristocratic of the guests, were collected together in a heap. At first, no one seemed inclined to sit down; every one was struck with a sudden bashfulness, till Father John, taking up the knife and fork at the top of the table, called McGovery to bring his wife to supper.
"Now, Denis, my man, don't be thinking of those two pigs, but bring your better half with you, and let's see how you can behave as a married man."
"Come, Miss Feemy," said Mary, "if you and the Captain now would jist sit down, and begin--there's a dear, Miss, do."
"Oh, Mary, nobody must sit down before you, to-night."
"Never mind me, Miss,--if I could only get you and the Captain seated; yer honer," and she turned round with a curtsey to Ussher, "there's Denis and Pat there will do nothing in life to help me!" and the poor woman seemed at her wit's end to know how to arrange her guests.
At last, however, Ussher and Feemy sat down at one side of the priest, Denis and his wife at the other, and by degrees the table got quite full; so much so, that when the boys saw one another taking their seats, they were as eager as before they had been slow; and they hustled each other at the bottom of the table, till they were so crowded that they hadn't room to use their arms. Pat sat at the bottom, and he and the priest emulated each other in the zeal and celerity with which they cut up and distributed the joints before them.