Miss Elizabeth raises heavenly eyes, a glittering moisture enhancing their brilliance.
"Have I not pledged my word, Harry; and if you believe not that, what will serve? Sure 'tis you that rove and will see fairer faces" (frantic protestations from Mr Lepel) "yet I don't doubt you. Farewell, dear Harry, and remember us when you are in the glitter of London."
She covered her face with a handkerchief, and he took the last embrace, kissed Mrs Gunning's hand and Maria's, and hurried madly from the room. Elizabeth unveiled her face and folded the handkerchief for future use.
"He's gone," says poor Mrs Gunning, seeking her own; "and if I know where tomorrow's dinner is to come from, for you all, I'm--a Dutchman!"
They mingled their tears, and Elizabeth's were real enough now. 'Tis possible, could the matter be sifted, that many more tears have been shed for absent dinners than absent lovers; and certainly, though beauty may survive without the last, it cannot without the first. There was so much of gloomy and terrible in their mama's aspect, that Maria wept also; and Kitty and Lucy, with the little John, who had all been secreted in the bedroom during the adieux, dashed in screaming at the tops of their voices, as if the heavens were falling; and so sat the poor unfortunate family drowned in tears. 'Twas not balls they thought of then, nor departing lovers, but simply bread and herrings.
A lady came down the street, picking her way through the garbage that adorned it. Her dress was hooped in the mode, and of a showy brocade, with much tinsel interwoven and very glittering, so that the ragged children in the gutter stood, finger in mouth, to see. She had a muslin cross-over upon an expansive bosom, and 'twas finely laced with Mechlin, not too clean, and set off with a black velvet ribbon about the throat, graced with a clasp of paste. A large tilted hat tied beneath her chin shaded an arch and sparkling pair of eyes, which, though not in their first youth, lighted up a face with striking features an air of easy good-humour. If her critics had accused this lady of being somewhat too goodhumored with the other sex, why 'twas perhaps natural to her circumstances and needs no further excuse. Her worst detractors never denied her a good heart, and an ear open to the lament of misery. In her hand she carried a cane of fine ebony, and altogether appeared a radiant vision of a fine woman in the purlieus of Britain Street. She paused and looked about her, bewildered.
"I declare I know not where I am got to!" says she, half aloud. "And these barbarians--'tis hard to be understood or to understand their gibberish. If now--"
And even as the words left her lips, arose a piercing wail from across the street, in which three lusty young throats united--Lucy, Kitty, and John, each outscreaming the other.
"Crimini!" says Madam, "what's this? Is Herod abroad in Dublin?" The screams redoubled. She added: "'Tis almost to be wished he was!" And stood half-laughing, half-unwilling to pass on.
"I will!" says she; and more doubtfully, "I won't! 'Tis not my business. Sure I have enough stage tears and sobs to make me distrust all I hear."