the priest: 'what the young gentleman says is too true.
The Continent is alarmingly infected with such opinions as these.'

'Have you talked on politics with young Kearney?' asked Miller.

'He has had no opportunity,' interposed Miss O'Shea. 'My nephew will be
three weeks here on Thursday next, and neither Mathew nor his son have
called on him.'

'Scarcely neighbourlike that, I must say,' cried Miller.

'I suspect the fault lies on my side,' said Gorman boldly. 'When I was
little more than a boy, I was never out of that house. The old man treated
me like a son. All the more, perhaps, as his own son was seldom at home,
and the little girl Kitty certainly regarded me as a brother; and though we
had our fights and squabbles, we cried very bitterly at parting, and each
of us vowed we should never like any one so much again. And now, after all,
here am I three weeks, within two hours' ride of them, and my aunt insists
that my dignity requires I should be first called on. Confound such
dignity! say I, if it lose me the best and the pleasantest friends I ever
had in my life.'

'I scarcely thought of _your_ dignity, Gorman O'Shea,' said the old lady,
bridling, 'though I did bestow some consideration on my own.'

'I'm very sorry for it, aunt, and I tell you fairly--and there's no
unpoliteness in the confession--that when I asked for my leave, Kilgobbin
Castle had its place in my thoughts as well as O'Shea's Barn.'

'Why not say it out, young gentleman, and tell me that the real charm of
coming here was to be within twelve miles of the Kearneys.'

'The merits of this house are very independent of contiguity,' said the
priest; and as he eyed the claret in his glass, it was plain that the
sentiment was an honest one.

'Fifty-six wine, I should say,' said Miller, as he laid down his glass.

'Forty-five, if Mr. Barton be a man of his word,' said the old lady
reprovingly.

'Ah,' sighed the priest plaintively, 'how rarely one meets these old
full-bodied clarets nowadays. The free admission of French wines has
corrupted taste and impaired palate. Our cheap Gladstones have come upon us
like universal suffrage.'

'The masses, however, benefit,' remarked Miller.

'Only in the first moment of acquisition, and in the novelty of the gain,'
continued Father Luke; 'and then they suffer irreparably in the loss
of that old guidance, which once directed appreciation when there was
something to appreciate.'

'We want the priest aga