“It will, I am convinced,” replied the gentleman, eyeing the herculean frame of the strange teacher and the substantial cudgel in Mat’s hand; “it will, undoubtedly.  But who is this most miserable naked lad here, Mr. Kevanagh?”

“Why, sir,” replied Mat, with his broad Milesian face, expanded by a forthcoming joke, “he is, sir, in a sartin and especial particularity, a namesake of your own.”

“How is that, Mr. Kevanagh?”

“My name’s not Kevanagh,” replied Mat, “but Kavanagh; the Irish A for ever!”

“Well, but how is the lad a namesake of mine?” said the Englishman.

“Bekase, you see, he’s a, poor scholar, sir,” replied Mat:  “an’ I hope your honor will pardon me for the facetiousness—­

     ‘Quid vetat ridentem dicere verum!’

as Horace says to Maecenas, in the first of the Sathirs.”

“There, Mr. Kavanagh, is the price of a suit of clothes for him.”

“Michael, will you rise up, sir, and make the gintleman a bow? he has given you the price of a shoot of clothes, ma bouchal.”

Michael came up with a very tattered coat hanging about him; and, catching his forelock, bobbed down his head after the usual manner, saying—­“Musha yarrah, long life to your honor every day you rise, an’ the Lord grant your sowl a short stay in purgatory, wishin’ ye, at the same time, a happy death aftherwards!”

The gentleman could not stand this, but laughed so heartily that the argument was fairly knocked up.

It appeared, however, that Squire Johnston did not visit Mat’s school from mere curiosity.

“Mr. Kavanagh,” said he, “I would be glad to have a little private conversation with you, and will thank you to walk down the road a little with this gentleman and me.”

When the gentlemen and Mat had gone ten or fifteen yards from the school door, the Englishman heard himself congratulated in the following phrases by the scholars:—­

“How do you feel afther bein’ sacked, gintleman?  The masther sacked you!  You’re a purty scholar!  It’s not you, Mr. Johnston, it’s the other.  You’ll come to argue agin, will you?  Where’s your head, Bah!  Come back till we put the suggaun* about your neck.  Bah!  You now must go to school to Cambridge agin, before you can argue an Irisher!  Look at the figure he cuts!  Why duv ye put the one foot past the other, when ye walk, for?  Bah!  Dunce!”

* The suggaun was a collar of straw which was put round the necks of the dunces, who were then placed at the door, that their disgrace might be as public as possible.

“Well, boys, never heed yez for that,” shouted Mat; “never fear but I’ll castigate yez, ye spalpeen villains, as soon as I go back.  Sir,” said Mat, “I supplicate upwards of fifty pardons.  I assure you, sir, I’ll give them a most inordinate castigation, for their want of respectability.”