When he rejoined the company, to whom he had given the slip, he found them all gone, except about six or eight whom his father had compelled to stop for dinner. His mind was now much lighter than it had been before his interview with Susan, nor were his spirits at all depressed by perceiving that a new knife and fork lay glittering upon the dresser for his own particular use. “Why, thin, where have you been all this time,” said the father, “an' we wantin' to know whether you'd like the mutton to be boiled or roasted!” “I was soliloquizing in the glen below,” replied Denny, once more assuming his pedantry, “meditating upon the transparency of all human events; but as for the beef and mutton, I advise you to boil the beef, and roast the mutton, or vice versa, to boil the mutton, and roast the beef. But I persave my mother has anticipated me, and boiled them both with that flitch of bacon that's playing the vagrant in the big pot there. _Tria juncla in uno_, as Horace says in the Epodes, when expatiating upon the Roman Emperors--ehem!” “Misther Denis,” said one of those present, “maybe you'd tell us upon the watch, what the hour is, if you plase, sir; myself never can know right at all, except by the shadow of the sun from the corner of our own gavel.” “Why,” replied Denis, pulling it out with much pomp of manner, “it's just half-past two to a quarter of a minute, and a few seconds.” “Why thin what a quare thing entirely a watch is,” the other continued; “now what makes you hould it to your ear, Misther Denis, if you plase?” “The efficient cause of that, Larry, is, that the drum of the ear, you persave--the drum of the ear--is enabled to catch the intonations produced by the machinery of its internal operations--otherwise the fact of applying it to the ear would be unnecessary--altogether unnecessary.” “Dear me! see what it is to have the knowledge, any way! But isn't it quare how it moves of itself like a livin' crathur? How is that, Misther Denis?” “Why, Larry,--ehem--you see the motions of it are--that is--the works or operations, are all continually going; and sure it is from that explanation that we say a watch goes well. That's more than you ever knew before, Larry.” “Indeed it surely is, sir, an' is much oblaged to you, Misther Denis; sure if I ever come to wear a watch in my fob, I'll know something about it, anyhow.”