'Tis certain a man might come up a thousand times behind a woman's back and not be startled as Harry Lepel was when he saw them; for there never was, nor will be, two such sisters. 'Twas like a battery suddenly unmasked; and what chance had the poor devil that was marching up to it like an innocent? The only thing he could do was to surrender at discretion--but to which lady? That was the trouble. Elizabeth Gunning settled it for him.
"I thank you, Sir," says she, with a smile that had ruined St. Anthony, for she was one that smiled with her eyes as well as her mouth--a golden sunshine that the heart opened to naturally.
He was stuttering and stammering. "Madam, I thank you for the happiness of touching anything your hand hath blessed."
'Twas sudden, I allow; but then, so too was her beauty. At all events, he dared no more, not having the courage, though all the will, to linger, and was turning off when a queer thing happened. But 'twas to be.
A drunken poltroon of a bargeman was coming up from Liffey-side, lurching and yawing like a Dutch hooker in a gale; and seeing them in a little bunch on the cobblestones, he took an anger at them in his wooden head, and, whether purposely or not I know not, but he elbowed up against Miss Maria and drove her into the dirty kennel; and she gave a faint scream, for her shoes were destroyed with the mud, and it was the only pair she had to her name. So what does Mr Lepel do but let drive straight from the shoulder at the offender, and in a minute the shoes and the lady were out of the kennel and the bargeman lying there as snug as snug, and the oaths he let out of him blackening the air like a flight of crows. So Mr Lepel, smiling with set lips like a picture, says to the girls:--
"Ladies, permit me to escort you to your home. 'Tis much to be regretted the streets are not safe for beauty unattended, though to be sure I have the happiness to profit by the circumstance. I trust it hath been no shock to your sensibility?"
And, indeed, tears had gathered in Elizabeth's eyes; but Maria was laughing like a Hebe, and looking up in his face--the blue-eyed lovely rogue!
"We thank you, Sir. 'Tis what our own brother had done had he been more than five. But while he is in the nursery, we must be obliged to kind strangers for protection."
"Madam, I would not willingly remain a stranger," says Mr Harry, very eager, and touching his cocked hat. "Permit me to present myself for want of a better introducer. My name is Harry Lepel."
"I thank you, Sir. 'Twill be remembered with gratitude. May we now bid you farewell?"