I drop the paper and sink into a chair, feeling deadly sick.
So you see that my dream came true, after all.
The facts narrated in the above story occurred in Ireland. The only liberty I have taken with them is in transplanting them to England.
POOR PRETTY BOBBY.
POOR PRETTY BOBBY.
CHAPTER I.
“Yes, my dear, you may not believe me, but I can assure you that you cannot dislike old women more, nor think them more contemptible supernumeraries, than I did when I was your age.”
This is what old Mrs. Wentworth says—the old lady so incredibly tenacious of life (incredibly as it seems to me at eighteen) as to have buried a husband and five strong sons, and yet still to eat her dinner with hearty relish, and laugh at any such jokes as are spoken loudly enough to reach her dulled ears. This is what she says, shaking the while her head, which—poor old soul—is already shaking a good deal involuntarily. I am sitting close beside her arm-chair, and have been reading aloud to her; but as I cannot succeed in pitching my voice so as to make her hear satisfactorily, by mutual consent the book has been dropped in my lap, and we have betaken ourselves to conversation.
“I never said I disliked old women, did I?” reply I evasively, being too truthful altogether to deny the soft impeachment. “What makes you think I do? They are infinitely preferable to old men; I do distinctly dislike them.”