“Sure what?”

“Dionnisis, our son Dionnisis, is goin’ to make himself a gintleman; he’ll ate no longer widout a knife and fork.”

“Saints about us!” exclaimed Mave, rising and looking with alarm into her husband’s face—­“saints about us, Denis, what is it ails you?  Sure there would be nothin’ wrong wid you about the head, Denis? or maybe it’s a touch of a faver you’ve got, out riddling that corn bare-headed, yistherday?  I remimber the time my Aunt Bridget tuck the scarlet faver, she begun to rave and spake foolish in the same way.”

“Why, woman, if your Aunt Bridget had a faver made up of all the colors in the rainbow, I tell you I’m spakin’ sinse!  Our son Dionnisis proved himself a gintleman out in the garden wid me about an hour ago.”

“I suppose so, Denis,” she replied, humoring’ him, for she was still doubly convinced that he labored under some incipient malady, if not under actual insanity; “an’ what son is this, Dinny?  I’ve never heard of him before.”

“Our son Denis, woman alive!  You must know he’s not to be called Dinny or Dinis any more, but Dionnisis; he’s to begin atin’ wid a knife an’ fork to-morrow; we must get him beef and mutton, and a tay breakfast.  He say’s it’s not fair play in any one that’s so deep read in the larnin’ as he is, to ate like a vulgarian, or to peel his phaties wid his fingers, an’ him knows so much Latin an’ Greek; an’ my sowl to happiness but he’ll stick to the gintlemanly way of livin’, so far as the beef, an’ mutton, and tay is consamed.”

“He will!  An’, Dinis O’Shaughnessy, who has a betther right to turn gintleman, nor the gorsoon that studied for that!  Isn’t it proud you ought to be that he has the spirit to think of sich things?”

“I’ll engage, Mave, on that point you’ll find him spirited enough; for my part, I don’t begrudge him what he wants; but I heard the people say, that no man’s a gintleman who’s not College-bred; and you know he’s not that yet.”

“You forget that he has gentle blood in his veins, Denis.  There was a day when my family, the Magennises, held their heads up; and Kolumkill says that the same time is to come back agin to all the ould families.  Who knows if it’s altogether from himself he’s takin’ to the beef an’ mutton, but from prophecy; he knows what he’s about, I’ll warrant him.  For our part, it’s not right for us to cross him in it; it’s for the good of the church, no doubt, an’ we might lose more by a blast upon the corn or the cattle, than he’d ate the other way.  That’s my dhrame out that I had last night about him.  I thought we were all gother somewhere that I can’t rightly remimber; but anyhow there was a great sight of people in it, an’ high doin’s goin’ an in the atin’ way.  I looked about me, an’ seen ever so many priests dressed all like the Protestant clargy; our Dinis was at the head of them, wid a three-cocked hat, an’ a wig upon him; he was cuttin’ up beef an’ mutton at the rate of a weddin’, an’ dhrinkin’ wine in metherfuls.”