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Updated: June 27, 2025
"Eight times!" cried Phelim. "Good bye to a hundred guineas, brother, you may say." "You may say," echoed his brother, and so they parted. Mr. Phelim O'Mooney the next morning sailed from Cork harbour with a prosperous gale, and with a confidence in his own success which supplied the place of auspicious omens.
Queasy, before whose eyes things passed continually without his seeing them, thanked Sir John for the care he had taken of his hat, drew on his gloves, and calculated aloud how long they should be going to the next stage. At the first town they passed through, O'Mooney bought a new hat, and Queasy deplored the unaccountable mistake by which Sir John's hat had been forgotten.
"Ship upon the face of the yearth." repeated an English porter with a sneer; "ship upon the face of the water, you should say, master; but I take it you be's an Irishman." O'Mooney had reason to be particularly vexed at being detected by this man, who spoke a miserable jargon, and who seemed not to have a very extensive range of ideas.
His real name was Phelim O'Mooney, and he was by profession a stocah, or walking gentleman; that is, a person who is too proud to earn his bread, and too poor to have bread without earning it.
Captain Murray assured him that there was no such place as Rascally in that part of Scotland; that he had never heard of any such person as Miss Sharperson, though he was acquainted with every family and every estate in the neighbourhood where she fabled hers to be. O'Mooney drew from memory, the map of the Rascally estate.
Terence heard the secret of the bet with joy, entered into the jest with all the readiness of an Irishman, and with equal joy and readiness swore by the hind leg of the holy lamb that he would never mention, even to his own dog, the name of Phelim O'Mooney, Esq., good or bad, till past twelve o'clock; and further, that he would, till the clock should strike that hour, call his master Sir John Bull, and nothing else, to all men, women, and children, upon the floor of God's creation.
"I never touch an egg for my share," said O'Mooney, carelessly; he knew that it was supposed to be an Irish custom to eat eggs at breakfast; and when the malicious waiter afterwards set a plate full of eggs in salt upon the table, our hero magnanimously abstained from them; he even laughed heartily at a story told by one of the ladies, of an Hibernian at Buxton, who declared that "no English hen ever laid a fresh egg."
Captain Murray was so much pleased by this openness, that as he shook hands with O'Mooney, he said, "Give me leave to tell you, sir, that even if you should lose your bet by this frank behaviour, you will have gained a better thing a friend."
O'Mooney exclaimed, "I hate cats almost as much as old women; and if I had been the English minister, I would have laid the dog-tax upon cats." "If you had been the Irish minister, you mean," said the stranger, smiling; "for I perceive now you are a countryman of my own." "How can you think so, sir?" said O'Mooney: "you have no reason to suppose so from my accent, I believe."
There was no withstanding all this; and whether our hero's good-nature deceived him we shall not determine, but he thought it most prudent, as he could not get rid of Terence, to take him into his service, to let him into his secret, to make him swear that he would never utter the name of Phelim O'Mooney during the remainder of this day.
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