“Begad! it's what I was thinking; if they wouldn't take it as a practical joke.” “You're looking for ould Brennan!” cried a weather-beaten hag; “but he's gone to Oughterard for a summons. You'll pay dear for your tricks this time, anyhow.” “Come up here, Simmy, and never mind her,” said Scanlan; then, turning to Nelligan, he added, “There's not such a character in the county! “I want my friend, Mr. Nelligan, here--Mr. Nelligan--Mr. Crow--I want him, I say, to come up and have a look at the great 'Historical '--eh, Simmy!--would n't it astonish him?” “Are you a votary of art, sir?” asked Crow, modestly. “I 've never seen what could be called a picture, except those portraits in the College Examination Hall might be deemed such.” “Indeed, and they're not worthy the name, sir. Flood, mayhap, is like, but he's hard and stiff, and out of drawing; and Lord Clare is worse. It's in the Low Countries you 'd see portraits, real portraits! men that look down on you out of the canvas, as if _you_ were the intruder there, and that _they_ were waiting to know what brought you. A sturdy old Burgomaster, for instance, with a red-brown beard and a fierce pair of eyes, standing up firm as a rock on a pair of legs that made many a drawbridge tremble as he walked home to dinner on the Grand Canal, at Rotterdam, after finishing some mighty bargain for half a spice island, or paying a million of guilders down as a dowry for that flaxen-haired, buxom damsel in the next frame. Look at the dimples in her neck, and mark the folds in her satin. Is n't she comely, and calm, and haughty, and house-wifery, all together? Mind her foot, it isn't small, but see the shape of it, and the way it presses the ground--ay, just so--my service to you; but you are one there 's no joking with, even if one was alone with you.” And he doffed his hat, and bowed obsequiously as he spoke. “You're an enthusiast for your art?” said Nelligan, interested by the unmistakable sincerity of his zeal. “I am, sir,” was the brief reply. “And the painter's is certainly a glorious career.” “If for nothing else,” burst in Crow, eagerly, “that it can make of one like me--poor, ignorant, and feeble, as I am--a fellow-soldier in the same army with Van Dyke and Titian and Velasquez--to know that in something that they thought, or hoped, or dared, or tried to do, I too have my share! You think me presumptuous to say this; you are sneering at such a creature as Simmy Crow for the impudence of such a boast, but it's in humility I say it, ay, in downright abject humility; for I 'd rather have swept out Rembrandt's room, and settled his rough boards on Cuyp's easel, than I 'd be a--a--battle-axe guard, or a lord-in-waiting, or anything else you like, that's great and grand at court.”