Like all men who aspire to something in Ireland, Kearney desired to see his son a barrister; for great as are the rewards of that high career, they are not the fascinations which appeal most strongly to the squirearchy, who love to think that a country gentleman may know a little law and be never the richer for it--may have acquired a profession, and yet never know what was a client or what a fee. That Kearney of Kilgobbin Castle should be reduced to tramping his way down the Bachelor’s Walk to the Four Courts, with a stuff bag carried behind him, was not to be thought of; but there were so many positions in life, so many situations for which that gifted creature the barrister of six years’ standing was alone eligible, that Kearney was very anxious his son should be qualified to accept that £1000 or £1800 a year which a gentleman could hold without any shadow upon his capacity, or the slightest reflection on his industry. Dick Kearney, however, had not only been living a very gay life in town, but, to avail himself of a variety of those flattering attentions which this interested world bestows by preference on men of some pretension, had let it be believed that he was the heir to a very considerable estate, and, by great probability, also to a title. To have admitted that he thought it necessary to follow any career at all, would have been to abdicate these pretensions, and so he evaded that question of the law in all discussions with his father, sometimes affecting to say he had not made up his mind, or that he had scruples of conscience about a barrister’s calling, or that he doubted whether the Bar of Ireland was not, like most high institutions, going to be abolished by Act of Parliament, and all the litigation of the land be done by deputy in Westminster Hall. On the morning after the visitors took their departure from Kilgobbin, old Kearney, who usually relapsed from any exercise of hospitality into a more than ordinary amount of parsimony, sat thinking over the various economies by which the domestic budget could be squared, and after a very long séance with old Gill, in which the question of raising some rents and diminishing certain bounties was discussed, he sent up the steward to Mr. Richard’s room to say he wanted to speak to him. Dick at the time of the message was stretched full length on a sofa, smoking a meerschaum, and speculating how it was that the ‘swells’ took to Joe Atlee, and what they saw in that confounded snob, instead of himself. Having in a degree satisfied himself that Atlee’s success was all owing to his intense and outrageous flattery, he was startled from his reverie by the servant’s entrance. ‘How is he this morning, Tim?’ asked he, with a knowing look. ‘Is he fierce--is there anything up--have the heifers been passing the night in the wheat, or has any one come over from Moate with a bill?’