“Ah, here are the papers, and I was forgetting. Let me see—‘Bayonne’—ay, ‘march of the troops—Sixth Corps.’ What can that be without? I say, Mike, who is cantering along the avenue?”
“It’s me, sir. I’m training the brown filly for Miss Mary, as your honor bid me last night.”
“Ah, very true. Does she go quietly?”
“Like a lamb, sir; barrin’ she does give a kick now and then at the sheet, when it bangs against her legs.”
“Am I to go over with the books now, sir?” said a wild-looking shockhead appearing within the door.
“Yes, take them over, with my compliments; and say I hope Miss Mary Blake has caught no cold.”
“You were speaking about a habit and hat, sir?” said Mrs. Magra, curtsying as she entered.
“Yes, Mrs. Magra; I want your advice. Oh, tell Barnes I really cannot be bored about those eternal turnips every day of my life. And, Mike, I wish you’d make them look over the four-horse harness. I want to try those grays; they tell me they’ll run well together. Well, Freney, more complaints, I hope? Nothing but trespasses! I don’t care, so you’d not worry me, if they eat up every blade of clover in the grounds; I’m sick of being bored this way. Did you say that we’d eight couple of good dogs?—quite enough to begin with. Tell Jones to ride into Banagher and look after that box; Buckmaster sent it from London two months ago, and it has been lying there ever since. And, Mrs. Magra, pray let the windows be opened, and the house well aired; that drawing-room would be all the better for new papering.”
These few and broken directions may serve to show my readers—what certainly they failed to convince myself of—that a new chapter of my life had opened before me; and that, in proportion to the length of time my feelings had found neither vent nor outlet, they now rushed madly, tempestuously into their new channels, suffering no impediment to arrest, no obstacle to oppose their current.
Nothing can be conceived more opposite to my late, than my present habits now became. The house, the grounds, the gardens, all seemed to participate in the new influence which beamed upon myself; the stir and bustle of active life was everywhere perceptible; and amidst numerous preparations for the moors and the hunting-field, for pleasure parties upon the river, and fishing excursions up the mountains, my days were spent. The Blakes, without even for a moment pressing their attentions upon me, permitted me to go and come among them unquestioned and unasked. When, nearly every morning, I appeared in the breakfast-room, I felt exactly like a member of the family; the hundred little discrepancies of thought and habit which struck me forcibly at first, looked daily less apparent; the careless inattentions of my fair cousins as to dress, their free-and-easy boisterous manner, their very accents, which fell so harshly on my ear, gradually made less and less impression, until at last, when a raw English Ensign, just arrived in the neighborhood, remarked to me in confidence, “What devilish fine girls they were, if they were not so confoundedly Irish!” I could not help wondering what the fellow meant, and attributed the observation more to his ignorance than to its truth.