Now there are no such scoffers at the frivolity and emptiness of human wishes as the well-to-do young fellows of two or three-and-twenty. They know the “whole thing,” and its utter rottenness. They smile compassionately at the eagerness of all around them; they look with bland pity at the race, and contemptuously ask, of what value the prize when it is won? They do their very best to be gloomy moralists, but they cannot. They might as well try to shiver when they sit in the sunshine. The vigorous beat of young hearts, and the full tide of young pulses, will tell against all the mock misanthropy that ever was fabricated! It would not be exactly fair to rank Conyers in this school, and yet he was not totally exempt from some of its teachings. Who knows if these little imaginary glooms, these brain-created miseries, are not a kind of moral “alterative” which, though depressing at the instant, render the constitution only more vigorous after?
At all events, he had resolved to have the cottage, and, going practically to work, he called Darby to his counsels to tell him the extent of the place, its boundaries, and whatever information he could afford as to the tenure and its rent.
“You 'd be for buying it, your honor!” said Darby, with the keen quick-sightedness of his order.
“Perhaps I had some thoughts of the kind; and, if so, I should keep you on.”
Darby bowed his gratitude very respectfully. It was too long a vista for him to strain his eyes at, and so he made no profuse display of thankfulness. With all their imaginative tendencies, the lower Irish are a very bird-in-the-hand sort of people.
“Not more than seventeen acres!” cried Conyers, in astonishment. “Why, I should have guessed about forty, at least. Isn't that wood there part of it?”
“Yes, but it's only a strip, and the trees that you see yonder is in Carriclough; and them two meadows below the salmon weir is n't ours at all; and the island itself we have only a lease of it.”
“It's all in capital repair, well kept, well looked after?”
“Well, it is, and isn't!” said he, with a look of disagreement. “He'd have one thing, and she'd have another; he 'd spend every shilling he could get on the place, and she 'd grudge a brush of paint, or a coat of whitewash, just to keep things together.”
“I see nothing amiss here,” said Conyers, looking around him. “Nobody could ask or wish a cottage to be neater, better furnished, or more comfortable. I confess I do not perceive anything wanting.”