"With the Golden Vanity and a woman with a man's name. And now leave me, my three queens, and I'll have a drop to warm me old bones and a whiff of the pipe to put the life in me. But don't forget the old woman when the great lords is kneeling before you and pouring the diamonds out of baskets before ye--and send the golden guineas, and--"
So she went on mumbling and muttering, and that was the first and last time the old hag told a fortune for love and not for money. She had not long to tell any, for she died next May, and not a soul to cry for her.
They stepped out into the sunshine, their heads high, and scarce a word to say to each other; for all three were thinking of the promises as light and glittering as soap bubbles. And Maria would not spare a word to Elizabeth, for not a woman but must walk after the heels of a duchess, and she was all for leading.
"The Golden Vanity!" says Elizabeth. "Mama, what should that be? When I'm a duchess--"
"I don't know, and most likely 'tis not worth knowing." Mrs. Gunning was angry. Her fine brows were drawn together. "Leave talking of duchesses, you silly fools, and go get the herrings for tea. I have left the children too long as it is."
So she marched down Britain Street like a queen, for all her burst shoe,--a shabby street it was for such ladies,--and the two walked off to Fishmonger's Alley, and not a head but turned to look at them.
"Faith, they're goddesses and no mistake!" says gay Mr Councillor Egan, on the way from the Law Courts, with his mulberry face and his mulberry velvet coat. 'Twas to Lawyer Curran he said it, and in a small city like Dublin the name held, and the two were called the Goddesses from that time.
Old Corrigan's words gave them courage for a while; but what can hold up against a diet of herrings day in and day out? And that was all the poor lady could give her family. What was she to do? Mr Gunning had took himself off to Castle Coote, his beggarly place in the country, where he could dice and drink in peace with the neighboring squireens, and live off claret and the skinny fowls that pecked about the avenue; and she had the weight of the children on her spare shoulders.
'Twas about this time that young Harry Lepel, the first man they met, in a way of speaking, fell in love with Elizabeth, the younger. The way it happened was this. She was walking down Mount Street with Maria, and she let fall her purse, and nothing in it but a pocket-piece to save her gentility. Harry was strolling off to my Lord Cappoquin's, from mounting guard at the Castle (for at that time his Lordship lived in Merrion Square); and indeed Mr Lepel was as fine a figure of a young man as a girl could wish to see, in his regimentals all laced with gold and his handsome head above them--a brown man with dark eyes. And seeing a young madam drop her purse, he stooped for it and, coming up behind them, saluted very stiff and offered it, and the two turned and looked him in the face.