“Don't look him up, darling,” pleaded Francesca. “You are so much our superior now that we positively must protect you from all elevating influences.”
“I won't insist on the Round Towers,” smiled Salemina, “and I think Penelope's idea a delightful one; we might add to it a sort of literary pilgrimage to the homes and haunts of Ireland's famous writers.”
“I didn't know that she had any,” interrupted Francesca.
This is a favourite method of conversation with that spoiled young person; it seems to appeal to her in three different ways: she likes to belittle herself, she likes to shock Salemina, and she likes to have information given her on the spot in some succinct, portable, convenient form.
“Oh,” she continued apologetically, “of course there are Dean Swift and Thomas Moore and Charles Lever.”
“And,” I added “certain minor authors named Goldsmith, Sterne, Steele, and Samuel Lover.”
“And Bishop Berkeley, and Brinsley Sheridan, and Maria Edgeworth, and Father Prout,” continued Salemina, “and certain great speech-makers like Burke and Grattan and Curran; and how delightful to visit all the places connected with Stella and Vanessa, and the spot where Spenser wrote the Faerie Queene.”
“'Nor own a land on earth but one,
We're Paddies, and no more,'”
sang Francesca. “You will be telling me in a moment that Thomas Carlyle was born in Skereenarinka, and that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet in Coolagarranoe,” for she had drawn the guidebook toward her and made good use of it. “Let us do the literary pilgrimage, certainly, before we leave Ireland, but suppose we begin with something less intellectual. This is the most pugnacious map I ever gazed upon. All the names seem to begin or end with kill, bally, whack, shock, or knock; no wonder the Irish make good soldiers! Suppose we start with a sanguinary trip to the Kill places, so that I can tell any timid Americans I meet in travelling that I have been to Kilmacow and to Kilmacthomas, and am going to-morrow to Kilmore, and the next day to Kilumaule.”
“I think that must have been said before,” I objected.