After this brilliant specimen of the mysteriously-sentimental and imaginative school was sufficiently applauded, dancing was recommenced, and Reddy seated himself beside Mrs. Riley, the incense of whose praise was sweet in his nostrils. "Oh, you have a soul for poetry indeed, sir," said the lady. "I was bewildered with all your beautiful idays; that 'honey stings the bee' is a beautiful iday—so expressive of the pains and pleasures of love. Ah! I was the most romantic creature myself once, Mister Reddy, though you wouldn't think it now; but the cares of the world and a family takes the shine out of us. I remember when the men used to be making hats in my father's establishment—for my father was the most extensive hatter in Dublin—I don't know if you knew my father was a hatter; but you know, sir, manufactures must be followed, and that's no reason why people shouldn't enjoy po'thry and refinement. Well, I was going to tell you how romantic I was, and when the men were making the hats—I don't know whether you ever saw them making hats——"
Reddy declared he never did.
"Well, it's like the witches round the iron pot in Macbeth; did you ever see Kemble in Macbeth? Oh! he'd make your blood freeze, though the pit is so hot you wouldn't have a dhry rag on you. But to come to the hats. When they're making them, they have hardly any crown to them at all, and they are all with great sprawling wide flaps to them; well, the moment I clapt my eyes on one of them, I thought of a Spanish nobleman directly, with his slouched hat and black feathers like a hearse. Yes, I assure you, the broad hat always brought to my mind a Spanish noble or an Italian noble (that would do as well, you know), or a robber or a murderer, which is all the same thing."
Reddy could not conceive a hat manufactory as a favourable nursery for romance; but as the lady praised his song, he listened complacently to her hatting.
"And that's another beautiful iday, sir," continued the lady, "where you make the rocks jealous of each other—that's so beautiful to bring in a bit of nature into a metaphysic that way."
"You flatter me, ma'am," said Reddy; "but if I might speak of my own work—that is, if a man may ever speak of his own work——"
"And why not, sir?" asked Mrs. Riley, with a business-like air; "who has so good a right to speak of the work as the man who done it, and knows what's in it?"
"That's a very sensible remark of yours, ma'am, and I will therefore take leave to say, that the idea I am proudest of, is the dark and heavy grief of the heart being compared to a black stone, and its depth of misery implied by the sea."
"Thrue for you," said Mrs. Riley; "and the blue sea—ah! that didn't escape me; that's an elegant touch—the black stone and the blue sea; and black and blue, such a beautiful conthrast!"
"I own," said Reddy, "I attempted, in that, the bold and daring style of expression which Byron has introduced."