“But it is not bother! Maurice; he's right. They are just what he says.”
“Arrah! don't be humbugging _me_, Mr. Crow,” said the other. “They 're a set of scheming, plotting vagabonds, that are unmanageable by any one, except a fellow that has the key to them as I have.”
“_You_ know them, that's true,” said Crow, half apologetically, for he liked the port, and did not feel he ought to push contradiction too far.
“And that's more than your friend Barry does, or ever will,” said Scanlan. “I defy an Englishman--I don't care how shrewd he is--to understand Paddy.”
A slight movement on Mr. Merl's part here admonished the speaker to speak lower.
“Ay,” continued Maurice, “that fellow there--whoever he is or whatever he is--is no fool! he 's deep enough; and yet there 's not a bare-legged gossoon on the estate I won't back to take him in.”
“But Barry's another kind of man entirely. You wouldn't call him cute or cunning; but he's a sensible, well-judging man, that has seen a deal of life.”
“And what is it, he says, brings him here?” asked Scanlan.
“He never said a word about that yet,” replied Crow, “further than his desire to visit a country he had heard much of, and, if I understand him aright, where some of his ancestors came from; for, you see, at times he's not so easy for one to follow, for he has a kind of a foreign twang in his tongue, and often mumbles to himself in a strange language.”
“I mistrust all these fellows that go about the world, pretending they want to see this and observe that,” said Scanlan, sententiously.
“It's mighty hard to mistrust a man that gives you the likes of that,” said Crow, as he drew a neatly folded banknote from his pocket, and handed it to Scanlan. “Twenty pounds! And he gave you that?” “This very evening. 'It is a little more than our bargain, Mr. Crow,' said he, 'but not more than I can afford to give; and so I hope you 'll not refuse it.' These were his words, as he took my lot of drawings--poor daubs they were--and placed them in his portfolio.”
“So that he is rich?” said Maurice, pensively, “There seems no end of his money; there's not a day goes over he does n't spend fifteen or sixteen pounds in meat, potatoes, barley, and the like. Sure, you may say he 's been feeding the two islands himself for the last fortnight; and what's more, one must n't as much as allude to it. He gets angry at the slightest word that can bring the subject forward. It was the other day he said to myself, 'If you can relieve destitution without too much parade of its sufferings, you are not only obviating the vulgar display of rich benevolence, but you are inculcating high sentiments and delicacy of feeling in those that are relieved. Take care how you pauperize the heart of a people, for you 'll have to make a workhouse of the nation.'”