“Well, you’ll see that I’m right,” said my uncle. “I tell you, men who look out for wives like a seasoned, obedient woman at the head of their families, and not your tittering, giddy young creatures, that have not had time to settle their brains or mature their understandings. No girl should be away from the eye of her natural guardian till she arrives at the full extent of her twenty-sixth year, like Dolly. You’ll see now she’ll do some mischief at the church or churchyard of Portarlington!”
“Stephen,” said my aunt, (who, by the bye, had her nose nearly stopped by the smallpox, which made her somewhat snuffle, and gave a peculiar emphasis to her vowels,) “’tis too late! Dolly knows nothing of the world. It would take a full year at the church and balls at Portarlington, the races of the Great Heath and green of Maryborough, the hurlings at the fort of Dunrally, and a month or two on a visit to our nephew, Jack Barrington, at Blandsfort, before she would learn enough to be able to converse with mankind on any subject—except darning your stockings, or turning off a kitchen-maid.“
My uncle started as much as his form would admit; cocked his eyebrows, and stared with all his might. “Fore gad, Kate, I believe you are out of your wits! Did you say Jack Barrington’s of Blandsfort? Jack Barrington’s! Why, you know very well, Kate, as every body knows, that there’s nothing going on at that house but hunting and feasting; dancing all night, and rattling about all day, like mad people; and coshering with raking pots of tea, hot cakes, syllabubs, pipers, and the devil knows what! No, no. If Dolly were to get one month among her cousins at Blandsfort, I should never see a day’s comfort after; topsy-turvy would go Moret! I’d never be master of my own house half an hour after Dolly had received a course of instruction at Jack Barrington’s. I don’t wish her to know too much of the world. No, no. ’Fore Gad, Kate, Dolly never puts her foot, while she is a spinster, into Jack Barrington’s house at Blandsfort.”
Folks generally become mulish as their years advance, and my uncle enjoyed that quality in its greatest perfection.—The Misses Dolly and Fanny Fitzgerald were commanded, under the pain of displeasure, by their patri-archal father, Stephen, to abjure and give up all thoughts of the festivities of Blandsfort.
“’Fore Gad, Kate!” said my uncle to their more conceding mother—“’Fore Gad, Kate, you had better send the girls a visiting to the antipodes than be turning them upside down at Blandsfort. No rational man would have any thing to do with them afterwards.—There it is, only pull-haul and tear, and the devil take the hindmost!—eh?”
“And for Heaven’s sake, Stephen,” replied my aunt, (who was no cosmographer,) “what family are these antipodes whom you would send our daughters to visit in preference to their nearest relations?—I never heard of them: they must be upstarts, Stephen. I thought I knew every family in the county.”
“’Fore Gad, Kate!” rejoined my uncle, laughing heartily, “your father, old Sir John, ought to be tied to the cart’s tail for so neglecting your education. Why, Kate, the antipodes are at this moment standing on their heads immediately under you—upside down, just as you see a fly on the ceiling, without the danger of falling down from it.”
“And for Heaven’s sake, Stephen,” said my puzzled aunt, “how do the ladies keep down their petticoats in that position?”
“Ask Sir Isaac Newton that,” said my uncle (who was not prepared for that interrogation). “But let me hear no more of the topsy-turvy of their cousins at Blandsfort. I’ll send my daughters to church at Portarlington, Kate, where they cannot fail of being seen and much noticed.”
“And that may not be much in their favour at present, Stephen,” replied my aunt, who was not blind to her progeny—“at least, until they are a little better rigged out than in their present nursery dresses, Stephen.”