'Stick to horses!' observed Mr. Adister.

It was pronounced as the termination to sheer maundering.

Patrick talked on the uppermost topic for the remainder of their stroll.

He noticed that his host occasionally allowed himself to say, 'You
Irish': and he reflected that the saying, 'You English,' had been hinted
as an offence.

He forgot to think that he had possibly provoked this alienation in a
scornfully proud spirit. The language of metaphor was to Mr. Adister
fool's froth. He conceded the use of it to the Irish and the Welsh as a
right that stamped them for what they were by adopting it; and they might
look on a country as a 'she,' if it amused them: so long as they were not
recalcitrant, they were to be tolerated, they were a part of us;
doubtless the nether part, yet not the less a part for which we are bound
to exercise a specially considerate care, or else we suffer, for we are
sensitive there: this is justice but the indications by fiddle-faddle
verbiage of anything objectionable to the whole in the part aroused an
irritability that speedily endued him with the sense of sanity opposing
lunacy; when, not having a wide command of the undecorated plain speech
which enjoyed his approval, he withdrew into the entrenchments of
contempt.

Patrick heard enough to let him understand why the lord of Earlsfont and
Captain Con were not on the best of terms. Once or twice he had a twinge
or suspicion of a sting from the tone of his host, though he was not
political and was of a mood to pity the poor gentleman's melancholy state
of solitariness, with all his children absent, his wife dead, only a
niece, a young lady of twenty, to lend an air of grace and warmth to his
home.

She was a Caroline, and as he had never taken a liking to a Caroline, he
classed her in the tribe of Carolines. To a Kathleen, an Eveleen, a Nora,
or a Bessy, or an Alicia, he would have bowed more cordially on his
introduction to her, for these were names with portraits and vistas
beyond, that shook leaves of recollection of the happiest of life--the
sweet things dreamed undesiringly in opening youth. A Caroline awakened
no soft association of fancies, no mysterious heaven and earth. The
others had variously tinted skies above them; their features wooed the
dream, led it on as the wooded glen leads the eye till we are deep in
richness. Nor would he have throbbed had one of any of his favourite
names appeared in the place of Caroline Adister.