A long low whistle was his reply. At last he said, ‘I suppose it’s a very grand conquest, and what the world calls “an elegant match”; but may I never see Easter, if I wouldn’t rather she’d marry a fine dashing young fellow over six feet high, like O’Shea there, than one of your gold-chain-and-locket young gentlemen who smile where they ought to laugh, and pick their way through life as a man crosses a stream on stepping-stones.’
‘Maybe she does not like Mr. O’Shea, sir.’
‘And do you think she likes the other man? or is it anything else than one of those mercenary attachments that you young ladies understand better, far better, than the most worldly-minded father or mother of us all?’
‘Mr. Walpole has not, I believe, any fortune, sir. There is nothing very dazzling in his position or his prospects.’
‘No. Not amongst his own set, nor with his own people—he is small enough there, I grant you; but when he come down to ours, Kitty, we think him a grandee of Spain; and if he was married into the family, we’d get off all his noble relations by heart, and soon start talking of our aunt, Lady Such-a-one, and Lord Somebody else, that was our first-cousin, till our neighbours would nearly die out of pure spite. Sitting down in one’s poverty, and thinking over one’s grand relations, is for all the world like Paddy eating his potatoes, and pointing at the red-herring—even the look of what he dare not taste flavours his meal.’
‘At least, sir, you have found an excuse for our conduct.’
‘Because we are all snobs, Kitty; because there is not a bit of honesty or manliness in our nature; and because our women, that need not be bargaining or borrowing—neither pawnbrokers nor usurers—are just as vulgar-minded as ourselves; and now that we have given twenty millions to get rid of slavery, like to show how they can keep it up in the old country, just out of defiance.’
‘If you disapprove of Mr. Walpole, sir, I believe it is full time you should say so.’
‘I neither approve nor disapprove of him. I don’t well know whether I have any right to do either—I mean so far as to influence her choice. He belongs to a sort of men I know as little about as I do of the Choctaw Indians. They have lives and notions and ways all unlike ours. The world is so civil to them that it prepares everything to their taste. If they want to shoot, the birds are cooped up in a cover, and only let fly when they’re ready. When they fish, the salmon are kept prepared to be caught; and if they make love, the young lady is just as ready to rise to the fly, and as willing to be bagged as either. Thank God, my darling, with all our barbarism, we have not come to that in Ireland.’
‘Here comes Mr. Walpole now, sir; and if I read his face aright, he has something of importance to say to you.’ Kate had barely time to leave the room as Walpole came forward with an open telegram and a mass of papers in his hand.