minted body used to be up at our place--Daft
Jimmy they called him--and if you axed him the time of day he'd tell you
to the minyit, exacter than any clock that ever sthruck, and he belike
not widin a mile of e'er a one."

"It seems a sight of money to be layin' out on larnin'," pursued old
Paddy; "I dunno where you'd be gettin' the vally of it that-a-way,
onless he was larnin' everythin' twyste over, same as you put two coats
of whitewash on a wall if you're after mixin' a drop more than you want.
You might do it then."

His friends' arguments and illustrations had apparently a depressing
effect upon old Felix, and he said with impatience, "Weary on it,
man-alive! Sure there's no doubt about what he was manin', at all at
all. The question is, have we any call to be takin' him at his word, and
spendin' it away from aught 'ud do him a benefit--the buryin' and Masses
and such?"

"That might be a diff'rint thing," said Mrs. Carbery.

"I'd scarce think it," said Terence Kilfoyle, "considherin' he'll say no
more to make it so. The job's out of his hand, and 'ill stay the way he
left it."

"He might ha' changed his mind afore now, for anythin' we can tell,"
said Mrs. Carbery.

"'Deed, then, he might so, the poor man, Heaven be his bed," said Mrs.
Dooley.

"You could ax the priest about it," Tim O'Meara said diffidently, out of
the melancholy muteness which it was his habit to maintain.

"That's as much as to say it should go for Masses," said old Felix,
clutching at any shred of definite opinion, "for it's on'y in the nathur
of things his Riverence 'ud be recommindin' thim."

But Tim shrank away from the shadow of responsibility, protesting, "Och,
not at all, not at all. I wasn't as much as sayin' anythin'."

The old man tossed up his chin disgustedly, and meditated gloomily
during a brief pause.

"There's no denyin'," he said then, "that poor Mr. Polymathers had a
won'erful great opinion of himself over there." He nodded towards
Nicholas's corner, and used this periphrasis with a sense that he had
taken a precaution against perilously arousing the boy's vanity. "Times
and agin last summer he was sayin' to me the lad 'ud do credit to us yet
if he had his chances. A pity it 'ud be, he said, if he didn't iver git
to school, or maybe College itself. And gave him his books and all. But
sure, I dunno would that make it look any the better for us if we was to
be grabbin' his bit of money, and we the on'y people he had