At night, when our parents stayed in town, she gathered us together in the long low drawing-room, and insisted that we should examine our consciences, meditate, and say the Rosary aloud to keep away robbers and ghosts. All the boys got to know of this edifying practice, and outside the window a crowd of arch-villains would gather, and shout the responses derisively. We could hear Arthur's high-bred tones sing out "Holy Mary, Mother of God," above the deep bass notes of the red-headed chief. Arthur's brother, an elegant guardsman, staying with the old lord for a couple of weeks, often condescended to join the band of reprobates; and once I peeped out through the big chinks of the shutter, and saw the man of fashion, with the hall-light directly upon his lean and bronzed visage, eyes devoutly lifted to heaven in mimicry of my eldest sister's ecstatic gaze, and hands folded like those of a stained-glass picture: "Holy Mary! pray for me, a miserable sinner. Blessed St. Agnes, help, oh help to convert me!"
Even the devotion of my eldest sister was unsettled, and we could see her mobile lips twitch. It sufficed to reveal to us that the autocrat was off guard, and we lay about the floor, and shrieked with delight.
Whenever he met my eldest sister upon the roads or rocks, the elegant guardsman raised his hat with the air of a prince, and never a hint about him of nocturnal iniquities.
But austere as she was in all things pertaining to discipline and religion, she allowed us unbounded freedom out-of-doors. Some notion of our use of that liberty may be seized from the following ejaculations of an elderly bachelor, a political friend, who came to visit my stepfather, and was confronted with this young saint of the golden locks, the established mistress of a large household.
The elderly gentleman, looking out of the window in front, perceived two little boots dangling from the branch of a high tree, almost against the heaven.
"Who's up that tall tree?" asked the elderly gentleman.
"Oh, that's Angela. She always reads up there."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the elderly gentleman.
After further conversation, he walked down the room to examine the view from the back. In gazing across the sea, seemingly near Howth, he detected a rock point surrounded with heavy waves, and two little specks upon this rock.