d, indeed, that day fortune had been
propitious;--fortune which ever favours the daring. Mrs. Townsend,
knowing that she had really nothing in the house, had sent Jerry to
waylay the Lent fishmonger, who twice a week was known to make his
way from Kanturk to Mallow with a donkey and panniers; and Jerry had
returned with a prize.

And now they sat down to dinner, and lo and behold, to the great
surprise of Mr. Carter, and perhaps also to the surprise of the host,
a magnificent turbot smoked upon the board. The fins no doubt had
been cut off to render possible the insertion of the animal into the
largest of the Drumbarrow parsonage kitchen-pots,--an injury against
which Mr. Townsend immediately exclaimed angrily. "My goodness,
they have cut off the fins!" said he, holding up both hands in deep
dismay. According to his philosophy, if he did have a turbot, why
should he not have it with all its perfections about it--fins and
all?

"My dear Aeneas!" said Mrs. Townsend, looking at him with that agony
of domestic distress which all wives so well know how to assume.

Mr. Carter said nothing. He said not a word, but he thought much.
This then was their pretended poorness of living! with all their mock
humility, these false Irishmen could not resist the opportunity of
showing off before the English stranger, and of putting on their
table before him a dish which an English dean could afford only on
gala days. And then this clergyman, who was so loudly anxious for
the poor, could not repress the sorrow of his heart because the
rich delicacy was somewhat marred in the cooking. "It was too bad,"
thought Mr. Carter to himself, "too bad."

"None, thank you," said he, drawing himself up with gloomy
reprobation of countenance. "I will not take any fish, I am much
obliged to you."

Then the face of Mrs. Townsend was one on which neither Christian
nor heathen could have looked without horror and grief. What, the
man whom in her heart she believed to be a Jesuit, and for whom
nevertheless, Jesuit though he was, she had condescended to cater
with all her woman's wit!--this man, I say, would not eat fish in
Lent! And it was horrible to her warm Irish heart to think that after
that fish now upon the table there was nothing to come but two or
three square inches of cold bacon. Not eat turbot in Lent! Had he
been one of her own sort she might have given him credit for true
antagonism to popery; but every inch of his coat gave the lie to s