“Keim-an-eigh. It is a mountain pass quite close to us here.”
“Admirably done! Why, Sybella dear, I shall not be surprised to see you take to the red petticoat and bare-feet soon. You have indoctrinated yourself wonderfully since your arrival.”
“I like the people with all my heart, Fred,” said she artlessly; “and if I could imitate many of their traits of forbearance and long-suffering patience by following their costume, I promise you I'd don the scarlet.”
“Ay, Fred,” said Sir Marmaduke, with a sententious gravity, “they don't know these Irish at all at our side of the water. They mistake them totally. They only want teaching, a little example—a little encouragement—that's all: and they are as docile and tractable as possible. I'll show you to-morrow what improvements a few months have effected. I'll bring you over a part of the estate, where there was not a hovel fit for a dog, and you shall see what comfortable dwellings they have. We hear nothing in England but the old songs about popery, and superstition, and all that. Why, my dear Fred, these people don't care a straw for the priest—they'd be any thing I asked them.”
“Devilish high principled that, any way,” said Fred, drily.
“I didn't exactly mean that; at least in the sense you take it. I was about to say, that such is their confidence, such their gratitude to the landlord, that—tha——”
“That in short they'd become Turks, for an abatement in the rent. Well, Sybella dear, is this one of the traits you are so anxious to imitate?”
“Why will you misunderstand, Fred?” said Sybella imploringly. “Cannot you see that gratitude may lead an uninstructed people far beyond the limits of reason—my father is so good to them.”
“With all my heart—I have not the slightest objection in life; indeed I'm not sure, if all the estate be like what I passed through this afternoon, if my generosity wouldn't go farther, and, instead of reducing the rent, make them an honest present of the fee simple.”
“Foolish boy!” said Sir Marmaduke, half angrily. “There are forty thousand acres of reclaimable land——”