ney had absconded when he saw that the tug of war was about to
commence. In a few minutes, however, the father returned, pushing
the boy before him, who in his reluctance to encounter the ordeal of
examination, clung to every chair, table, and person in his way, hoping
that his restiveness might induce them to postpone the examination till
another occasion. The father, however, was inexorable, and by main force
dragged him from all his holds, and, placed him before Father Con.

"What's come over you, at all at all, you unsignified shingawn you, to
affront the gintleman in this way, and he kind enough to go for to give
you an examination?--come now, you had betther not vex me, I tell you,
but hould up your head, and spake out loud, that we can all hear
you: now, Father Con, achora, you'll not be too hard upon him in the
beginning, till he gets into it, for he's aisy dashed."

"Here, Briney," said Father Philemy, handing him his tumbler, "take
a pull of this and if you have any courage at all in you it will raise
it;--take a good pull." Briney hesitated.

"Why, but you take the glass out of his Reverence's hand, sarrah,"
said the father--"what! is it without dhrinking his Reverence's health
first?"

Briney gave a most melancholy nod at his Reverence, as he put the
tumbler to his mouth, which he nearly emptied, notwithstanding his
shyness.

"For my part," said his Reverence, looking at the almost empty tumbler,
"I am pretty sure that that same chap will be able to take care
of himself through life. And so, Captain,--" said he, resuming the
conversation with Captain Wilson--for his notice of Briney was only
parenthetical.

Father Con now took the book, which was AEsop's Fables, and, in
accordance with Briney's intention, it opened exactly at the favorite
fable of Gallus Gallinacexis. He was not aware, however, that Briney had
kept that place open during the preceding part of the week, in order to
effect this point. Father Philemy, however, was now beginning to relate
another anecdote to the Captain, and the thread of his narrative twined
rather ludicrously with that of the examination.

Briney, after, a few hems, at length proceeded--"_Gallus Gallinaceus_, a
dung-hill cock--"

"So, Captain, I was just after coming out of Widow Moylan's--it was in
the Lammas fair--and a large one, by the by, it was--so, sir, who should
come up to me but Branagan. 'Well, Branagan,' said I, 'how does the
world go now with you?'----"