And a terrible storm it was, of the genuine Capricorn type, sudden, deluging, laced with blue lightning, whirling in the opposite direction to that which our cyclones take. At midnight the Taprobane was running under bare poles, shipping great seas heavily, with an electric coronet gleaming and bristling all around truck and dog–vane. And by that time she was sixty miles from her under–supercargo.
CHAPTER VII.
Dr. Huttonʼs baby was getting better, and Rosa, who had been, as the nurse said, “losing ground so sadly, poor dear,” was beginning to pick up her crumbs again. Therefore Rufus, who (in common with Rosa and all the rest of the household) regarded that baby as the noblest and grandest sublimation of humanity, if not as the final cause of this little worldʼs existence, was beginning now to make up his mind that he really might go to London that week, without being (as his wife declared he must be, if he even thought about it) cruel, inhuman, unfatherly, utterly void of all sense of duty, not to say common affection. And she knew quite well what he wanted. All he wanted was to go and see Mr. Riversʼs peach–trees in blossom, as if that was such a sight as her baby. Yes, her baby, maʼs own darling, a dove of a dumpling dillikins; to think that his own pa should prefer nasty little trees without a hair on them, and that didnʼt even know what bo meant, to the most elegant love of a goldylocks that ever was, was, was!
Master Goldylocks had received, from another quarter, a less classical, and less pleasing, but perhaps (from an objective point of view) a more truthful and unprismatic description of the hair it pleased God to give him.
“Governorʼs carrots, and no mistake,” cried Mrs. OʼGaghan the moment she saw him, which, of course, was upon his first public appearance—catch Biddy out of the way when any baby, of any father or mother she had ever heard of, was submitted even to the most privileged inspection—”knew he must have ‘em, of course. You niver can conquer that, maʼam, if your own hair was like a sloe, and you tuk me black briony arl the time. Hould him dacent, will ye, nurse? Not slot his head down that fashion! He donʼt want more blood in his hair, child. Oh yes, I can see, maʼam! Niver knowed more nor two wi’ that red–hot poker colour, colour of the red snuff they calls ‘Irish blackguard’ in the top of a hot shovel; and one of the two were Mr. Hutton, maʼam, saving your presence to spake of it; and the other were of Tim Brady, as were hung at the crossroads, near Clonmel, for cutting the throat of his grandmother.”
“Oh, Mary, take her away. What a horrid woman!”
Here Mrs. OʼGaghan was marched away, amid universal indignation, which she could not at all understand. But she long had borne against Rufus Hutton the bitterest of all bitter spites (such as only an Irishwoman can bear), for the exposure of her own great mistake, and the miserable result which (as she fully believed) had sprung from all his meddling. And yet she was a “good–hearted” woman. But a good heart is only the wad upon powder, when a violent will is behind it.
Not to attach undue importance to Biddyʼs prepossessions, yet to give every facility for a verdict upon the question, I am bound to state what an old–young lady, growing every month more satirical, because nobody would have her, yet quite unconscious that the one drawback was the main cause of the other (for all men hate sarcastic women),—how tersely she expressed herself.