“Oh! never mind what I said just now—mind what I’m saying now. Isn’t a red heat that you can see, and that warms you, better than a white heat that blinds you? I’d rather a man would knock me down than stand smiling at me, as cousin Ulick did just now, when I know he could have kilt me; he is not passionate—he has the command of himself—every feature under the courtier’s regimen of hypocrisy. Harry Ormond, don’t set about to cure yourself of your natural passions—why, this is rank methodism, all!”
“Methodism, sir?”
“Methodism, sir!—don’t contradict or repeat me—methodism, that the woman has brought you to the brink of, and I warn you from it! I did not know till now that your Lady Annaly was such a methodist—no methodist shall ever darken my doors, or lighten them either, with their new lights. New lights! new nonsense!—for man, woman, or beast. But enough of this, and too much, Harry. Prince Harry, pull that bell a dozen times for me this minute, till they bring out my old horse.”
Before it was possible that any one could have come up stairs, the impatient monarch, pointing with his crutch, added, “Run to the head of the stairs, Prince Harry dear, and call and screech to them to make no delay; and I want you out with me; so get your horse, Harry.”
“But, sir—is it possible—are you able?”
“I am able, sir, possible or not,” cried King Corny, starting up on his crutches. “Don’t stand talking to me of possibilities, when ‘tis a friend I am going to serve, and that friend as dear as yourself. Aren’t you at the head of the stairs yet? Must I go and fall down them myself?”
To prevent this catastrophe, our young hero ran immediately and ordered the horses: his majesty mounted, or rather was mounted, and they proceeded to one of the prettiest farms in the Black Islands. As they rode to it, he seemed pleased by Harry’s admiring, as he could, with perfect truth, the beauty of the situation.
“And the land—which you are no judge of yet, but you will—is as good as it is pretty,” said King Corny, “which I am glad of for your sake, Prince Harry; I won’t have you, like that donny English prince or king, they nicknamed Lackland.—No: you sha’n’t lack land while I have it to let or give. I called you prince—Prince of the Black Islands—and here’s your principality. Call out my prime minister, Pat Moore. I sent him across the bog to meet us at Moriarty’s. Here he is, and Moriarty along with him to welcome you. Patrick, give Prince Harry possession—with sod and twig. Here’s the kay from my own hand, and I give you joy. Nay, don’t deny me the pleasure—I’ve a right to it. No wrong to my daughter, if that’s what you are thinking of—a clear improvement of my own,—and she will have enough without it. Besides, her betrothed White Connal is a fat grazier, who will make her as rich as a Jew; and any way she is as generous as a princess herself. But if it pains you so, and weighs you down, as I see it does, to be under any obligation—you shall be under none in life. You shall pay me rent for it, and you shall give it up whenever you please. Well! we’ll settle that between ourselves,” continued his majesty; “only take possession, that’s all I ask. But I hope,” added he, “before we’ve lived a year, or whatever time it is till you arrive at years of discretion, you’ll know me well enough, and love me well enough, not to be so stiff about a trifle, that’s nothing between friend and friend—let alone the joke of king and prince, dear Harry.”
The gift of this principality proved a most pernicious, nearly a fatal, gift to the young prince. The generosity, the delicacy, with which it was made, a delicacy worthy of the most polished, and little to have been expected from the barbarian mock-monarch, so touched our young hero’s heart, so subjected his grateful spirit to his benefactor, that he thenceforth not only felt bound to King Corny for life, but prone to deem every thing he did or thought, wisest, fittest, best.
When he was invested with his petty principality, it was expected of him to give a dinner and a dance to the island: so he gave a dinner and a dance, and every body said he was a fine fellow, and had the spirit of a prince. “King Corny, God bless him! couldn’t go astray in his choice of a favourite—long life to him and Prince Harry! and no doubt there’d be fine hunting, and shooting, and coursing continually. Well, was not it a happy thing for the islands, when Harry Ormond first set foot on them? From a boy ‘twas asy to see what a man he’d be. Long may he live to reign over us!”