We pass over in silence the many conjectures that were made by several of the congregation concerning the reason why Miss Phoebe Hill should appear in such a shameful shabby pair of gloves on a Sunday. After service was ended, the verger went, with great mystery, to examine the hole under the foundation of the cathedral;and Mrs. Hill repaired, with the grocer's and the stationer's ladies, to take a walk in the Close, where she boasted to all her female acquaintance, whom she called her friends, of her maternal discretion in prevailing upon Mr. Hill to forbid her daughter Phoebe to wear the Limerick gloves.
In the meantime, Phoebe walked pensively homewards, endeavouring to discover why her father should take a mortal dislike to a man at first sight, merely because he was an Irishman: and why her mother had talked so much of the great dog which had been lost last year out of the tan-yard; and of the hole under the foundation of the cathedral! "What has all this to do with my Limerick gloves?"thought she. The more she thought, the less connection she could perceive between these things: for as she had not taken a dislike to Mr. Brian O'Neill at first sight, because he was an Irishman, she could not think it quite reasonable to suspect him of making away with her father's dog, nor yet of a design to blow up Hereford Cathedral. As she was pondering upon these matters, she came within sight of the ruins of a poor woman's house, which a few months before this time had been burnt down. She recollected that her first acquaintance with her lover began at the time of this fire; and she thought that the courage and humanity he showed, in exerting himself to save this unfortunate woman and her children, justified her notion of the possibility that an Irishman might be a good man.
The name of the poor woman whose house had been burnt down was Smith: she was a widow, and she now lived at the extremity of a narrow lane in a wretched habitation. Why Phoebe thought of her with more concern than usual at this instant we need not examine, but she did; and, reproaching herself for having neglected it for some weeks past, she resolved to go directly to see the widow Smith, and to give her a crown which she had long had in her pocket, with which she had intended to have bought play tickets.
It happened that the first person she saw in the poor widow's kitchen was the identical Mr. O'Neill. "I did not expect to see anybody here but you, Mrs. Smith," said Phoebe, blushing.
"So much the greater the pleasure of the meeting; to me, I mean, Miss Hill," said O'Neill, rising, and putting down a little boy, with whom he had been playing. Phoebe went on talking to the poor woman; and, after slipping the crown into her hand, said she would call again. O'Neill, surprised at the change in her manner, followed her when she left the house, and said, "It would be a great misfortune to me to have done anything to offend Miss Hill, especially if I could not conceive how or what it was, which is my case at this present speaking." And as the spruce glover spoke, he fixed his eyes upon Phoebe's ragged gloves. She drew them up in vain; and then said, with her natural simplicity and gentleness, "You have not done anything to offend me, Mr. O'Neill; but you are some way or other displeasing to my father and mother, and they have forbid me to wear the Limerick gloves.""And sure Miss Hill would not be after changing her opinion of her humble servant for no reason in life but because her father and mother, who have taken a prejudice against him, are a little contrary.""No," replied Phoebe; "I should not change my opinion without any reason; but I have not yet had time to fix my opinion of you, Mr.
O'Neill."
"To let you know a piece of my mind, then, my dear Miss Hill,"resumed he, "the more contrary they are, the more pride and joy it would give me to win and wear you, in spite of 'em all; and if without a farthing in your pocket, so much the more I should rejoice in the opportunity of proving to your dear self, and all else whom it may consarn, that Brian O'Neill is no fortune-hunter, and scorns them that are so narrow-minded as to think that no other kind of cattle but them there fortune-hunters can come out of all Ireland. So, my dear Phoebe, now we understand one another, I hope you will not be paining my eyes any longer with the sight of these odious brown bags, which are not fit to be worn by any Christian arms, to say nothing of Miss Hill's, which are the handsomest, without any compliment, that ever I saw, and, to my mind, would become a pair of Limerick gloves beyond anything: and I expect she'll show her generosity and proper spirit by putting them on immediately.""You expect, sir!" repeated Miss Hill, with a look of more indignation than her gentle countenance had ever before been seen to assume. "Expect!" "If he had said hope," thought she, "it would have been another thing: but expect! what right has he to expect?"Now Miss Hill, unfortunately, was not sufficiently acquainted with the Irish idiom to know that to expect, in Ireland, is the same thing as to hope in England; and, when her Irish admirer said "Iexpect," he meant only, in plain English, "I hope." But thus it is that a poor Irishman, often, for want of understanding the niceties of the English language, says the rudest when he means to say the civillest things imaginable.
