“There it is!” cried he, indignantly. “From the 'Times' down to the Widow Morris, it's the same story,—the Irish! the Irish!—and it's no use fighting against it. Smash the Minister in Parliament, and you 'll be told it was a speech more adapted to an Irish House of Commons; break the Sikh squares with the bayonet, and the cry is 'Tipperary tactics.' Isn't it a wonder how we bear it! I ask any man, did he ever hear of patience like ours?”
It was just as his indignation had reached this crisis that May Leslie hurriedly came into the room to search for a locket Clara had dropped when she fainted. While O'Shea assisted her in her search, he bethought whether the favorable moment had not arrived to venture on the great question of his own fate. It was true, he was still smarting under a national disparagement; but the sarcasm gave a sort of reckless energy to his purpose, and he mattered, “Now, or never, for it!”
“I suppose it was a keepsake,” said he, as he peered under the tables after the missing object.
“I believe so. At least, the poor child attaches great value to it.”
“Oh dear!” sighed O'Shea. “If it was an old bodkin that was given me by one I loved, I 'd go through fire and water to get possession of it.”
“Indeed!” said she, smiling at the unwonted energy of the protestation.
“I would,” repeated he, more solemnly. “It's not the value of the thing itself I 'd ever think of. There's the ring was wore by my great-grandmother Ram, of Ram's Mountain; and though it's a rose-amethyst, worth three hundred guineas, it's only as a family token it has merit in my eyes.”
Now this speech, discursive though it seemed, was artfully intended by the Honorable Member, for while incidentally throwing out claims to blood and an ancestry, it cunningly insinuated what logicians call the à fortiori,—how the man who cared so much for his grandmother would necessarily adore his wife.
“We must give it up, I see,” said May. “She has evidently not lost it here.”
“And it was a heart, you say!” sighed the Member.