“I cannot help it, you know,” said Nora. “I was born that way. I am Irish, you know, mammy.”
“You are also English, my dear,” replied her mother. “Pray remember that fact when you see your cousins.”
“My cousins! My English cousins! But am I to see them? Mother, mother, do you mean it?”
“I do mean it, Nora. I intend you to accept your uncle's invitation. No heroics, please,” as the girl was about to fling her arms round her mother's neck; “keep those for your father, Nora; I do not wish for them. I intend you to go and behave properly; pray remember that when you give way to pure Irishism, as I may express your most peculiar manners, you disgrace me, your mother. I mean you to go in order to have you tamed a little. You are absolutely untamed now, unbroken in.”
“I never want to be broken in,” whispered Nora, tears of mingled excitement and pain at her mother's words brimming to her eyes. “Oh, mother!” she said, with a sudden wail, “will you never, never understand Nora?”
“I understand her quite well,” said Mrs. O'Shanaghgan, her voice assuming an unwonted note of softness; “and because I do understand Nora so well,” she added—and now she patted the girl's slender arm—“I want her to have this great advantage, for there is much that is good in you, Nora. But you are undisciplined, my dear; wild, unkempt. Little did I think in the old days that a daughter of mine should have to have such things said to her. Our more stately, more sober ways will be a revelation to you, Nora. To your brother Terence they will come as second nature; but you, my dear, will have to be warned beforehand. I warn you now that your Uncle George will not understand the wild excitement which you seem to consider the height of good breeding at O'Shanaghgan.”
“Mother, mother,” said Nora, “don't say anything against O'Shanaghgan.”
“Am I doing so?” said the poor lady. She stood for a moment and looked around her. Nora stopped also and when she saw her mother's eyes travel to the rambling old house, to the neglected lawn, the avenue overgrown with weeds, it seemed to her that a stab of the cruelest pain was penetrating her heart.
“Mother sees all the ugliness; she is determined to,” thought Nora; “but I see all the beauty. Oh! the dear, dear old place, it shan't go if Nora can save it.” Then, with a great effort, she controlled herself.
“How am I to go?” she said. “Where is the money to come from?”