CHAPTER VII.
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.
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