LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE
[“IN THE SECLUSION OF THE BACK BEDROOM”][5]
[“IF YE BATE HIM ANY MORE HE’LL LIE DOWN”][19]
[“SHE’S A LITTLE GIDDY ABOUT THE HEAD, MISS”][28]
[“WE VIEWED THE STOWING OF THE GOVERNESS-CART”][31]
[“MR FLAHERTY’S BOY WAS DEMONSTRATING WITH A PITCH-FORK”][35]
[“WE PURSUED OUR WAY TO RECESS”][39]
[A FISHERMAN AT RECESS][43]
[THE TWO HOTEL DOGS][49]
[“NOW”][53]
[“BALLINAHINCH CAME SLOWLY INTO SIGHT”][65]
[“WE HEARD WHEELS CLOSE AT HAND”][71]
[“HANGING ON EACH TO OUR REIN”][85]
[“SITTING ON LITTLE STOOLS INSIDE THE BIG FIREPLACE”][97]
[“REVEALED A MONSTROUS GREY GOOSE”][105]
[MR. MITCHELL HENRY’S PLACE, KYLEMORE CASTLE][119]
[JACK’S FATHER][125]
[AT TULLY FAIR][129]
[RENVYLE HOUSE HOTEL][141]
[“IT WAS THE BROAD WINDOW SEAT, IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE MOUNTAINS, THAT TURNED THE SCALE”][147]
[“SHE WAS AN AMERICAN LADY”][149]
[THE RENVYLE DONKEY][158]
[“DOWN THE HILL OF SALRUCK”][169]
[“THE HOLY WELL, SALRUCK”][175]
[“EIGHT O’CLOCK BREAKFAST, PLEASE, AND CALL US SHARP AT SEVEN”][191]
[“THE REGRET WITH WHICH WE PAID OUR HOTEL BILL WAS NOT WHOLLY MERCENARY, BUT WAS BLENDED WITH THE FINER PATHOS OF FAREWELL”][197]

THROUGH CONNEMARA IN A GOVERNESS-CART.

CHAPTER I.

MY second cousin and I came to London for ten days in the middle of last June, and we stayed there for three weeks, waiting for a fine day.

We were Irish, and all the English with whom we had hitherto come in contact had impressed upon us that we should never know what fine weather was till we came to England. Perhaps we came at a bad moment, when the weather, like the shops, was having its cheap sales. Certainly such half-hours of sunshine as we came in for were of the nature of “soiled remnants,” and at the end of the three weeks aforesaid we began to feel a good deal discouraged. Things came to a climax one day when we had sat for three-quarters of an hour in a Hungarian bread shop in Regent Street, waiting for the rain to clear off enough to let us get down to the New Gallery. As the fifth party of moist ladies came in and propped their dripping umbrellas against the wall behind us, and remarked that they had never seen such rain, our resolution first began to take shape.

“Hansom!” said my second cousin.

“Home!” said I.

By home, of course we meant the lodgings—the remote, the Bayswaterian, but still, the cheap, the confidential; for be they never so homely, there’s no place—for sluttish comfort and unmolested unpunctuality—like lodgings.