But when I was out--oh, what a change I found in
the religious house! no card-playing, for it had been forbidden to
the scholars, and there was now nothing going on but reading and
singing; divil a merry visage to be seen, but plenty of prim airs
and graces; but the case of the scholars, though bad enough, was
not half so bad as mine, for they could spake to each other,
whereas I could not have a word of conversation, for the ould thaif
of a rector had ordered them to send me to 'Coventry,' telling them
that I was a gambling cheat, with morals bad enough to corrupt a
horse regiment; and whereas they were allowed to divert themselves
with going out, I was kept reading and singing from morn till
night. The only soul who was willing to exchange a word with me
was the cook, and sometimes he and I had a little bit of discourse
in a corner, and we condoled with each other, for he liked the
change in the religious house almost as little as myself; but he
told me that, for all the change below stairs, there was still
card-playing on above, for that the ould thaif of a rector, and the
sub-rector, and the almoner played at cards together, and that the
rector won money from the others--the almoner had told him so--and,
moreover, that the rector was the thaif of the world, and had once
been kicked out of a club-house at Dublin for cheating at cards,
and after that circumstance had apparently reformed and lived
decently till the time when I came to the religious house with my
pack, but that the sight of that had brought him back to his ould
gambling.
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