“I wish they were burnt,” said the husband, whose patience could endure no longer. “Who gave you those cursed gloves, Phœbe?”
“Papa,” answered Phœbe, in a low voice, “they were a present from Mr. Brian O’Neill.”
“The Irish glover!” cried Mr. Hill, with a look of terror.
“Yes,” resumed the mother; “very true, Mr. Hill, I assure you. Now, you see, I had my reasons.”
“Take off the gloves directly: I order you, Phœbe,” said her father, in his most peremptory tone. “I took a mortal dislike to that Mr. Brian O’Neill the first time I ever saw him. He’s an Irishman, and that’s enough, and too much for me. Off with the gloves, Phœbe! When I order a thing, it must be done.”
Phœbe seemed to find some difficulty in getting off the gloves, and gently urged that she could not well go into the cathedral without them. This objection was immediately removed by her mother’s pulling from her pocket a pair of mittens, which had once been brown, and once been whole, but which were now rent in sundry places; and which, having been long stretched by one who was twice the size of Phœbe, now hung in huge wrinkles upon her well-turned arms.
“But, papa,” said Phœbe, “why should we take a dislike to him because he is an Irishman? Cannot an Irishman be a good man?”
The verger made no answer to this question, but a few seconds after it was put to him observed that the cathedral bell had just done ringing; and, as they were now got to the church door, Mrs. Hill, with a significant look at Phœbe, remarked that it was no proper time to talk or think of good men, or bad men, or Irishmen, or any men, especially for a verger’s daughter.
We pass over in silence the many conjectures that were made by several of the congregation concerning the reason why Miss Phœbe Hill should appear in such a shameful shabby pair of gloves on a Sunday. After service was ended, the verger went, with great mystery, to examine the hole under the foundation of the cathedral; and Mrs. Hill repaired, with the grocer’s and the stationer’s ladies, to take a walk in the Close, where she boasted to all her female acquaintance, whom she called her friends, of her maternal discretion in prevailing upon Mr. Hill to forbid her daughter Phœbe to wear the Limerick gloves.
In the meantime, Phœbe walked pensively homewards, endeavouring to discover why her father should take a mortal dislike to a man at first sight, merely because he was an Irishman: and why her mother had talked so much of the great dog which had been lost last year out of the tan-yard; and of the hole under the foundation of the cathedral! “What has all this to do with my Limerick gloves?” thought she. The more she thought, the less connection she could perceive between these things: for as she had not taken a dislike to Mr. Brian O’Neill at first sight, because he was an Irishman, she could not think it quite reasonable to suspect him of making away with her father’s dog, nor yet of a design to blow up Hereford Cathedral. As she was pondering upon these matters, she came within sight of the ruins of a poor woman’s house, which a few months before this time had been burnt down. She recollected that her first acquaintance with her lover began at the time of this fire; and she thought that the courage and humanity he showed, in exerting himself to save this unfortunate woman and her children, justified her notion of the possibility that an Irishman might be a good man.