Macnamara, who arrested a narrative in
which she was demonstrating to O'Flaherty the general's lineal descent
from old Chattesworth--an army tailor in Queen Anne's time--and his
cousinship to a live butter dealer in Cork--and spicing her little
history with not a very nice epigram on his uncle, 'the counsellor,' by
Dr. Swift, which she delivered with a vicious chuckle in the
'Fireworker's' ear, who also laughed, though he did not quite see the
joke, and said, 'Oh-ho-ho, murdher!'
The good Mrs. Mack received the general haughtily and slightly, and Miss
Magnolia with a short courtesy and a little toss of her head, and up
went her fan, and she giggled something in Toole's ear, who grinned, and
glanced uneasily out of the corner of his shrewd little eye at the
unsuspicious general and on to Aunt Rebecca; for it was very important
to Dr. Toole to stand well at Belmont. So, seeing that Miss Mag was
disposed to be vicious, and not caring to be compromised by her tricks,
he whistled and bawled to his dogs, and with a jolly smirk and flourish
of his cocked-hat, off he went to seek other adventures.
Thus, was there feud and malice between two houses, and Aunt Rebecca's
wrong-headed freak of cutting the Macnamaras (for it was not 'snobbery,'
and she would talk for hours on band-days publicly and familiarly with
scrubby little Mrs.
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