, isn't this annoying? Poor Father Tom never interrupted me. He
always used say: "Yes! yes! to be sure! to be sure!" or, "Ki bono? ki
bono?" which grated horribly on my ears. I see I must be more careful;
and I shall defer this lecture.

"Might I ask you to proceed, sir?" he said. "It is very interesting,
indeed. You were talking about the pugnacity of mirrors."

There was a slight acidity here; but the poor fellow was put out.

"Never mind," I said, "you have a great deal to learn yet--with wrinkles
and gray hairs. But if you want to keep these raven locks, now wet and
dripping, intact, remember, _quieta non movere_! And if you want to keep
your face, now smooth and ruddy, but, I regret to say, glistening with
rain, free from wrinkles, remember, _quieta non movere_. Take now your
frequent altar denunciations of local superstitions,--the eggs found in
the garden, and the consequent sterility of the milk, the evil eye and
the cattle dying, etc., etc.,--it will take more than altar
denunciations, believe me,--it will take years of vigorous education to
relegate these ideas into the limbo of exploded fantasies. And the
people won't be comfortable without them. You take away the poetry,
which is an essential element in the Gaelic character, and you make the
people prosaic and critical, which is the worst thing possible for them.
Thiggin-thu? But I beg your pardon. You are beyond all that."

"It sounds plausible," he said, getting down from the gig; "but it
sounds also, pardon the expression, cowardly. However, we'll see!"

CHAPTER VII

SCRUPLES

Captain Campion gave a large dinner party on All-Hallows-Eve. It is a
ghostly time; and, in Ireland, every one, even the most advanced and
materialistic, feels that the air is full of strange beings, who cannot
be accounted for either by the microscope or the scalpel. Father Letheby
was invited and went. I was rather glad he did go, for I felt that the
village was rather dull for such a brilliant young fellow; and I had a
kind of pardonable pride in thinking that he would be fully competent to
meet on their own level any pretentious people that might stray hither
from more civilized centres. There is hardly, indeed, any great risk of
meeting too intellectual people in Ireland just now. The anatomy of a
horse is about the term and end of the acquired knowledge of the
stronger sex; and the latest ball--well, this won't do! I must suspend
this criticism, otherwise I shal