AND HOW I HAVE CAUGHT MY FISH 15 



" Will either of ye gintlemen be having a drop of 

 the crathur wid ye ? If ye have, I'll be giving ye 

 me opinion of that same free of charge " ; and, on 

 learning that we had not with us the material with 

 which to trespass so far on his generosity, he blurted 

 forth again, " Are ye crass ? " My son. was the first 

 to see something comical in this inquiry, and Pat, 

 seeing his smile, felt encouraged to ask of him, " Is 

 the old gintleman vixed ? " 



By this time we had given up our comfortable 

 horizontal positions for the perpendicular and were 

 filling our pipes, while Pat had seated himself where 

 my toes had been, and, with folded arms and nearly 

 closed eyes, was about to show us how comfortable 

 he was and how soon asleep, when his weasel eye 

 caught sight of the pipes, and he with evident 

 interest inquired, " Shall we be smoking ? " I 

 replied, "Why not?" For the next few minutes 

 our visitor's eyes made steady journeys from one or 

 other pipe-bowl to where the smoke spread out fan- 

 like on the ceiling of the carriage, after which he 

 inquired, "Shall I be smoking?" I replied, "Do." 

 He considered, scratched his head, and said to 

 himself, " Do, do" ; then, after a short silence, he 

 turned to my son with, "Shall I be smoking?" 

 " Do," said he. This " do " Pat mumbled to himself 

 again and again, evidently quite fogged as to its 

 meaning, and there was something of an appeal in 

 his next remark : " Ach, are ye both crass ? " Then 

 it dawned on me that Pat was longing for a smoke, 



