’Where’s the pot-house they call the Salmon House?—­doing a good business—­eh?’ and at last—­’I’m told there’s some trout in the stream.  Is there anyone in the town who knows the river, and could show me the fishing?—­Oh, the clerk! and what sort of fish is he—­hey?—­Oh! an honest, worthy man, is he?  Very good, Sir.  Then, perhaps, Mr. a—­perhaps, Sir, you’ll do me the favour to let one of your people run down to his house, and say Mr. Dangerfield, Lord Castlemallard’s agent, who is staying, you know, at the Brass Castle, would be much obliged if he would bring his rod and tackle, and take a walk with him up the river, for a little angling, at ten o’clock!’

Jolly Phil Cleary was deferential, and almost nervous in his presence.  The silver-haired, grim man, with his mysterious reputation for money, and that short decisive way of his, and sudden cynical chuckle, inspired a sort of awe, which made his wishes, where expressed with that intent, very generally obeyed; and, sure enough, Irons appeared, with his rod, at the appointed hour, and the interesting anglers—­Piscator and his ‘honest scholar,’ as Isaac Walton hath it—­set out side by side on their ramble, in the true fraternity of the gentle craft.

The clerk had, I’m afraid, a shrew of a wife—­shrill, vehement, and fluent.  ‘Rogue,’ ‘old miser,’ ‘old sneak,’ and a great many worse names, she called him.  Good Mrs. Irons was old, fat, and ugly, and she knew it; and that knowledge made her natural jealousy the fiercer.  He had learned, by long experience, the best tactique under fire:  he became actually taciturn; or, if he spoke, his speech was laconic and enigmatical; sometimes throwing out a proverb, and sometimes a text; and sometimes when provoked past endurance, spouting mildly a little bit of meek and venomous irony.

He loved his trout-rod and the devious banks of the Liffey, where, saturnine and alone, he filled his basket.  It was his helpmate’s rule, whenever she did not know to a certainty precisely what Irons was doing, to take it for granted that he was about some mischief.  Her lodger, Captain Devereux, was her great resource on these occasions, and few things pleased him better than a stormy visit from his hostess in this temper.  The young scapegrace would close his novel, and set down his glass of sherry and water (it sometimes smelt very like brandy, I’m afraid).  To hear her rant, one would have supposed, who had not seen him, that her lank-haired, grimly partner, was the prettiest youth in the county of Dublin, and that all the comely lasses in Chapelizod and the country round were sighing and setting caps at him; and Devereux, who had a vein of satire, and loved even farce, enjoyed the heroics of the fat old slut.