Halting awhile, to take up passengers at the Mucross Hotel, we were again besieged by another bevy of these fancy timber merchants; and here a little scene occurred, which, however trivial it may appear from my feeble account of it, was very touching in reality. A woman, who had been, you could see, as pretty in her prime as the prettiest of her younger companions, but whose beauty was fast fading away, came and offered her basket to a coarse specimen of the genus “Gent,” who was seated on our side of the car, and who very abruptly, and thoughtlessly I dare say,—
“But evil is wrought for want of thought,
As well as want of heart,”—
repulsed her, saying, “that he should buy from the young uns if he bought at all.” I saw a look of intense pain pass over her face, as though she were hurt at heart; and, although the others made way for her, with sweet sisterly kindness, when Frank called her to him, and though he bought her most elaborate bracelets, and I a box of cunning workmanship, designed, I believe, for gloves, but subsequently used by a small niece of mine as a bed for her youngest doll, the sliding lid, drawn up to the sleeper's chin, forming a counterpane of unrivalled splendour; although, I say, we did all in our power to comfort, the storm-clouds, when we left, hung heavily over her, and the first rain-drops glistened in her pale-blue eyes.
Take heed, ye maidens beautiful (I feel a little saturnine this morning, and shall put no more lemon in my punch, whatever Francis may say), be ye Belles of the Park or the Pattern, to this extremity ye must come at last! You, Lady Constance Plantagenet, who promised to waltz with me at the County Ball, and pretended to have forgotten (though it was written upon those gem-studded tablets), when Lord Hanwell (he has at least three slates off his roof, and always went, when in the Artillery, by the sobriquet of “Lincoln and Bennett,” being notoriously as mad as two hatters), was pleased to invite you to the dance! And you, Susan Holmes, beauty of our village, looking coldly now at Will Strong, the keeper, the hardest hitter in “our Eleven,” and the handsomest fellow in the parish, because the young squire's friend, with the big moustache (Will wanted to know whether he came from Skye), made a fool of you at the Servants' Ball! You, Lady Constance, ignoring your engagements, and you, Susan Holmes, oblivious of the fact that your papa is only a blacksmith; be assured, both of you, that the light will fade from those flashing eyes, and the roses will be blanched on those glowing cheeks, and that—
“Violets pluckt, the sweetest showers
Will ne'er make grow again.”
What moral deduction can I draw but this:—Marry, marry, ye damsels beautiful, the men whom ye love at heart; and so perpetuate your loveliness, and live again in your daughters!
The cold salmon, on which we lunched at Kenmare, was so especially delicious, that when I turned to Frank, an hour afterwards, on the car, and asked him what o'clock it was, not perceiving that he was asleep, he murmured something about “a slice of the thin;” and the tourist in Ireland finds this fish so good and abundant, that he almost begins to apprehend “a favourable eruption” of scales, and feels disposed to snap at the larger flies which come within the prehensiveness of his dental powers.
