These accidental meetings between Denis and the pretty daughters of the neighboring farmers were, somehow, very frequent.  Our hero, however, was always extremely judicious in tempering his gallantry and moral advice to his young female acquaintances.  In the beginning of the conversation he was sly and complimentary, afterwards he became more insinuating, then more direct in his praises of their beauty; but as his timidity on the point of character was known, the mischief-loving girls uniformly ended with a threat of exposing him to the priest, to his friends, or to the neighbors, as the whim directed them.  This brought him back to his morality again; he immediately commenced an exhortation touching their religious duties, thus hoping to cover, by a trait more becoming his future destination, the little harmless badinage in which he had indulged.

The girls themselves frequently made him the topic of conversation, a proof that he was not altogether indifferent to them.  In these little conclaves he came very well off.  Among them all it was admitted “that there was a rogue in his coat;” but this was by no means uttered in a tone of voice that betrayed any disrelish to him.  On the contrary, they often said—­and many of them with an involuntary sigh—­that “he was too purty to be made a priest of;” others, that “it was a pity to make a priest of so fine a young man;” others, again, that “if he must be a priest, the colleens would be all flockin’ to hear his sarmons.”  There was one, however, among them who never mentioned him either in praise or censure; but the rapid changes of her expressive countenance gave strong indications to an observing eye that his name, person, and future prospects were capable of exciting a deep and intense interest in her heart.

At length he began to appear on horseback; and as he had hitherto been in the habit of taking that exercise bare-backed, now he was resolved to get into a saddle, and ride like a gentleman.  Henceforth he might be seen mounted upon one of his father’s horses, quite erect, and with but one spur, which was, in fact, the only spur, except the whiskey bottle, that had been in the family for three generations.  This was used, he declared, for no other purpose in life than that of “stimulating the animal to the true clerical trot.”

From the moment he became a mounted man he assumed an air of less equivocal command in the family; and not only to his own relations was this authority manifested, but to his more distant acquaintances, and, in short, to the whole parish.  The people now began to touch their hats to him, which act of respect he returned as much in imitation of the parish priest as possible.  They also began to ask him what o’clock it was, and Denis, with a peculiar condescension, balanced still with becoming dignity, stopped, pulled out his watch, and told the hour, after which he held it for a few seconds to his ear with an experienced air, then put it in a dignified manner in his fob, touched the horse with the solitary spur, put himself more erect, and proceeded with—­as he himself used to say, when condemning the pride of the curate—­“all the lordliness of the parochial priest.”