"Half-a-crown, indeed, for a tradesman like you! There's Corney Dolan there, who don't seem to have a coat that fits him too well, would do more for his wife, if it was G.o.d's pleasure he was to have one this night."

"Well, there;" and Denis put down another half-crown. This money, which is always put down just before the marriage, is a bridal present to the bride, and becomes her exclusive property.

"Well, Mary, you must be getting the rest of it from him another time."

"Let her alone for that, yer riverence," said Corney Dolan--who considered that Father John's allusion to his coat privileged him to put in his joke--"let her alone for that; she knows how to be getting the halfpence, and to hoult them too."

"It's a great deal you're knowing about it, I'm thinking, Mr. Dolan,"

retorted Denis; "it's a pity you couldn't keep the hoult of any yerself."

"Wisht, boys! how am I to marry you at all, if you go on this way?

Come, Mary, off with that glove of yours; now for the ring, Denis:"

and Mary hauled away at the glove, which the heat of her hand prevented her from pulling off.

"Drat it for a glove, then!"

"Ah, alanna, gloves come so nathural to your purty hand, they don't like to lave it at all."

At last, however, Mary got her hands ready for action; the ring was in the plate with the two half-crowns; Father John was standing between the two matrimonial aspirants; Ussher and Feemy were close behind Mary, and Brady was sitting down on the right hand of Denis; and the priest opened his book and began.

The marriage ceremony took about five minutes; but during this time Father John found occasion to whisper Ussher to come up close to the bride; and then, after hurrying over a great part of the service almost under his breath, he p.r.o.nounced the final words--_salute nostra_--in a loud voice, adding at the same time to Ussher, "Now, my boy!"

Ussher, in obedience to the priest's injunction, seized hold of the bride at one side, to kiss her; while McGovery, determined to vindicate his own right, pounced on her on the other; justly thinking that the first kiss she should have after her wedding ought to be given to her by her lawful married husband.

But, alas! both aspirants were foiled, and Mary got no kiss at all.

She, in her dismay at the energy of the two aspirants, ducked her head down nearly to the level of the table, and Denis, in his zeal and his hurry, struck Ussher in the face with his own forehead with no slight force. The Captain retreated, half-stunned, and not very well pleased with the salute he had received; and Denis was so shocked at what he had done, that he forgot his wife--and, apparently even the pigs and the money--in his regrets and apologies.

"Egad, Captain," said Father John, "that's more of a kiss than I meant to get you; why, you're as awkward, McGovery, as a bullcalf.

Who'd have thought to see you b.u.t.ting at the Captain, like an old goat on his hind legs!"

"Faix then, yer riverence, I didn't intend to be trating the Captain in that way; but any way the Captain's head is 'amost as hard as my own, for the flashes isn't out of my eyes yet."

"Never mind," said Ussher; "and if you always take care of your wife the same way, my good fellow, you'll be sure she'll not come to any harm, for want of looking after."

In the meantime Mary had escaped from the salute intended for her, and was, with the aid of Biddy, Mrs. Mehan, and sundry others of her visitors, engaged in extricating two legs of mutton, a ham, and large quant.i.ties of green cabbages from the pots in which they had been boiling in the outer room.

"G.o.d bless you, Sally dear, and will you drain them pratees? they'll be biled to starch. And Mrs. Mehan, darling, my heart's broke with the big pot here, will you lend me a hand? good luck to you then.

There's Denis and Pat, bad manners to them, they'd see me kilt with all the bother, and stand there doing nothing under the sun."

And poor Mary McGovery, as we must now call her, toiled and groaned under the labours of her wedding day till the perspiration ran from under her wedding cap; and her wedding-dress gave manifold signs of her zeal in preparing the wedding-supper.

Whilst Mary was dishing the mutton, &c., Father John was employed in the not less important business of collecting his dues.

Between McGovery and Pat Brady he had succeeded in getting two thirty-shilling notes, which lay in the bottom of the plate, and formed a respectable base for the little heap of silver which he would collect; and if he did not get as much as the occasion would seem to warrant, the deficiency arose from no delicacy in asking, or want of perseverance in urging.

"Now, Captain, you're the only Protestant among us; show these Catholics of mine a liberal example--show them what they ought to do for their priest,"--here Captain Ussher put a couple of half-crowns in the plate. "There, boys, see what a Protestant does for me. Well, Feemy, I never ask the ladies, you know, but I shan't let Thady off; though he ain't here, I shall settle that in the rent."

"Oh, yes, Father John; make Thady pay for himself and me; Mrs.

Brennan has got all my money."

"But where's Thady, Feemy dear? I hope you and he are good friends now."

"Oh yes, Father John; that is, I didn't see him since morning."

"But will he be here to-night?"

"He said he would; but you'd best ask Pat, he knows most about him."

This conversation took place in an under tone, and the priest walked on with his plate.

"Come, Mr. Tierney, how's yourself? I see you're waiting there, quite impatient, with your hands in your pocket. It's nothing less than a crown piece, I'll go bail."

"'Deed then, crown pieces a'nt that plenty in the counthry, these days, Father John; the likes of them"--and he put half-a-crown in the plate--"are scarce enough."

The speaker was an old man, rather decently dressed in knee-breeches and gaiters; he was one of those who, even in bad times, manage by thrift and industry to get, among the poor, the reputation of comparative wealth.

"And that's true for you, Mr. Tierney, and thank you kindly; they do however say, that however scarce they are in the country, you've your share of them."

"Go on, Father John, go on, you do be saying more than you know."

And by degrees the priest went through them all. From most of them he got something; from some a shilling, from some only sixpence; some few gave nothing at all: these in general endeavoured to escape observation behind the backs of the donors, but Father John let none of them off; and those who were unprepared, and who alleged their poverty, and their inability, he reproved for their idleness, and hinted rather strongly that their visits to Mrs. Mulready's, or similar establishments, were the cause of their not being able to do what he called their duty by their priest.

Standing in a corner, at the further end of the room, and resting against a wall, was Joe Reynolds: as Father John had a bad opinion of this man, and as he was not a parishioner of his, he was returning without speaking to him, when Joe said,

"You're in the right of it, Father John, not to be axing such a poor divil as me; you know, betwixt them all, they've not left me the sign of a copper harp."

"I know, Reynolds, you're too fond of Mrs. Mulready's to have much for your own priest, let alone another."

"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 a.s.sistance 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, n.o.body 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.

At Pat's end of the table plates were scarce, and the boys round him took the huge lumps of blood-red mutton in their fists, and seemed perfectly independent of such conventional wants as knives and forks, in the ease and enjoyment with which they dispatched their repast.

At last Brady had done all to the joint that carving could do, and having kept a tolerably sufficient lion's share for himself, he pa.s.sed the bone down the table, which was speedily divided into as many portions as nature had intended that it should be.

Matters were conducted in a rather more decorous manner among the aristocrats at Father John's end of the table--though even here they were carried on in a somewhat rapid and voracious fashion. The priest helped Feemy and Ussher, Mary and her husband; and then remarking that he had done all the hard work of the evening, and that he thought it was time to get a bit himself, he filled a moderate plate for his own consumption, and pa.s.sed the joint down to be treated after the same manner as its fellow.

As long as the eating continued there was not much said; but when the viands had disappeared, and the various bottles came into requisition, the clatter of tongues became loud and joyous; and though the first part of the entertainment had to all appearance come to a rather too speedy termination for want of material to carry it on, there seemed, from the quant.i.ty of whiskey produced, little chance of any similar disappointment in what the greater portion of the guests considered the more agreeable part of the entertainment.