‘Just like a lump,’ said Puddock, briskly.

‘And how is that?’ enquired Devereux.

‘Flay the lump—­splat him—­divide him,’ answered Puddock, with great volubility; ’and cut each side into two pieces; season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and baste with clarified butter; dish him with slices of oranges, barberries, grapes, gooseberries, and butter; and you will find that he eats deliriously either with farced pain or gammon pain.’

This rhapsody, delivered with the rapidity and emphasis of Puddock’s earnest lisp, was accompanied with very general tokens of merriment from the company, and the priest, who half suspected him of having invented it, was on the point of falling foul of him, when Lord Castlemallard rose to take leave, and the general forthwith vacated the chair, and so the party broke up, fell into groups, and the greater part sauntered off to the Phoenix, where, in the club-room, they, with less restraint, and some new recruits, carried on the pleasures of the evening, which pleasures, as will sometimes happen, ended in something rather serious.

CHAPTER VII.

SHOWING HOW TWO GENTLEMEN MAY MISUNDERSTAND ONE ANOTHER, WITHOUT ENABLING THE COMPANY TO UNDERSTAND THEIR QUARREL.

Loftus had by this time climbed to the savage lair of his garret, overstrewn with tattered papers and books; and Father Roach, in the sanctuary of his little parlour, was growling over the bones of a devilled-turkey, and about to soothe his fretted soul in a generous libation of hot whiskey punch.  Indeed, he was of an appeasable nature, and on the whole a very good fellow.

Dr. Toole, whom the young fellows found along with Nutter over the draught-board in the club-room, forsook his game to devour the story of Loftus’s Lenten Hymn, and poor Father Roach’s penance, rubbed his hands, and slapped his thigh, and crowed and shouted with ecstasy.  O’Flaherty, who called for punch, and was unfortunately prone to grow melancholy and pugnacious over his liquor, was now in a saturnine vein of sentiment, discoursing of the charms of his peerless mistress, the Lady Magnolia Macnamara—­for he was not one of those maudlin shepherds, who pipe their loves in lonely glens and other sequestered places, but rather loved to exhibit his bare scars, and roar his tender torments for the edification of the market-place.

While he was descanting on the attributes of that bewitching ‘crature,’ Puddock, not two yards off, was describing, with scarcely less unction, the perfections of ‘pig roast with the hair on:’  and the two made a medley like ‘The Roast Beef of Old England,’ and ’The Last Rose of Summer,’ arranged in alternate stanzas.  O’Flaherty suddenly stopped short, and said a little sternly to Lieutenant Puddock—­

’Does it very much signify, Sir (or as O’Flaherty pronounced it “Sorr,”) whether the animal has hair upon it or not?’