“Rig away, rig away, Kate!” said my uncle, “rig away; you may make them as tawdry as jackdaws, so as you don’t turn their heads at Jack Barrington’s.”
In fine, they were made sufficiently glaring, and, accompanied by aunt in the resuscitated post-chaise, made their first début at the church of Portarlington. Of course they attracted universal notice: the ladies congratulated my aunt on her showy girls; the parson on their coming of age; and the innkeeper declared they were the most genteelest of all the new subscribers to his ball and supper at the market-house.
The ladies returned to Moret highly delighted with their cordial reception in the church-yard, and Mrs. Gregory, the head mantua-maker of the county, was immediately set to work to fit out the ladies in the newest taste of Dublin fashions, preparatory to the next ball.
Now, Portarlington had been a very small village in the Queen’s County until the French Protestant emigrants, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, made a settlement there, (it was said, from the enormous quantity of fine frogs generated in that neighbourhood,) and there they commenced schoolmasters and mistresses, with a good reputation, which they ceased not to keep up, until in time it became an established seminary. Here the numerous schools and academies were always ready to pour out their hobbardehoys and misses in their teens to the dances and assemblies; but very few mature gentlemen assisted at these coteries, and it was the customary prayer of all the young ladies going to those balls—“If I cannot get a man for a partner, O Heaven, in thy mercy, send me a big boy!”
Suffice it to say, that my cousins, at the first ball, outglared all the females in the room put together; my aunt’s old rings and hereditary paraphernalia had been brought fully into requisition. But, unfortunately, Providence sent them that night neither a grown man partner nor a big boy in the shape of a man partner, and, after having sat as full-blown wall-flowers the whole night, they returned to Moret highly discouraged, that their rose-colour satin and family Dresdens, which cut all the other girls out of feather, had no better result than the going home again, my philosophical aunt telling them all the way home—“that balls were no places to catch husbands at, there was so much variety; and I assure you, Dolly,” said my aunt, “men, now-a-days, look more at a girl’s purse than her flounces, and you’ll have nothing very showy in that way whilst your father and mother are alive, Dolly.”
My poor cousin Dolly’s feet also, after three balls more (dead failures) got so crimped and cramped by tight shoes, to restrain her fat brackets within reasonable boundaries, that corns, bunnions, callosities, &c., showed a plentiful harvest the ensuing summer, and, conspiring with her winter chilblains, and tortures to match, put my poor cousin’s jigging out of the question for the remainder of her existence.
My cousin Fanny, whose feet were only bone and gristle, made numerous exhibitions, both in the minuet and rigadoon, and for the same purpose; but no wooers for the Miss Fitzgeralds of Moret Castle made their advances; not a sigh was exploded for either of the demoiselles, though the church, the balls, the races at the great heath, and hurlings at the fort of Dunnally, were all assiduously attended for the laudable purpose aforesaid; all in vain; and after a two years’ vigorous chase, the game was entirely given over, and my cousins slunk back into cover, where, in all human probability, they would have remained during their lives, had not Heaven sent down a putrid fever to bring my uncle Stephen up to it, as all the old ladies asserted (to please the widow), although old Julian, the exciseman, ungratefully remarked, that “there must have been a great number of vacancies in heaven, when they called up the counsellor there.” However, before her weeds got rusty, my aunt, shaking a loose leg, after having been forty years handcuffed and linked to Counsellor Stephen, set out with the entire family for the great city of Dublin, where, no doubt, the merits, if not the beauty of my cousins, with a more proximate reversion, would be duly appreciated.
However, neither their merit nor beauty, nor the reversion, could exorcise the spirit of celibacy, which still pursued them from Moret. Jack, their brother, married a mantua-maker; and my poor uncle not being a Mahomedan, and, of course, not having any houri in the clouds to solace his leisure hours, and finding himself lonesome without his old Kate, Providence again showed its kindness towards him, and sent down a pulmonary consumption to Dublin, to carry my aunt up to her well-beloved Stephen. My unfortunate cousins were now left orphans, of only forty and forty-one years of age, to buffet with the cares of the world, and accept the brevet rank of old maidens, which they certainly did, with as much good-humour and as little chagrin as are generally exhibited on those occasions. Their incomes were ample for all their purposes, and they got on to the end of their career very comfortably. Dolly chose three lap-dogs and a parrot for her favourites, and Fanny adopted a squirrel and four Tom-cats to chase away her ennui. But those animals having a natural antipathy to each other, got into an eternal state of altercation and hostility, the parrot eternally screeching, to make peace between them. So a maid-servant, who understood the humour of poodles, cats, &c. &c., was hired to superintend and keep them in peace and proper order.
This maid of natural history got great ascendancy; and, as she was what is termed in Ireland a swaddler, (in England a canter or psalm-singer,) she soon convinced my cousins that there was no certain road to salvation, save through the preachers and love-feasts of those societies. Of course a plate was laid ready for some lank pulpiteer at dinner, every day, and my cousins became thorough-paced swaddlers (singing excepted). But, as years would still roll on, and they could not be always swaddling, and saving their souls, some extra comfort was, as customary, found necessary for their languid hours. The maid of natural history therefore suggested that, as solid food and weak Bourdeaux were not of the best efficacy for feeble appetites, which her mistresses were beginning to show symptoms of, a glass of cordial, now and then, in the morning, might restore the tone of their stomachs. Of consequence, a couple of liqueur bottles were prepared, and always properly replenished; the ladies found their liquid appetites daily increase: the preacher got the whole bottle of wine to himself; Lundy Foot’s most pungent was well crammed into my cousins’ nostrils, as an interlude, till snuffling was effected; and the matter went on as cheerily as possible between the dogs and cats, the preacher, snuff, and the cordial comforts, till an ill-natured dropsy, with tappings to match, sent my cousin Dolly to my uncle Stephen; and some other disorder having transmitted cousin Fanny the same journey to her mother, I anticipated very great satisfaction in opening the last will and testament of the survivor; whereupon, all things being regularly prepared, with an audible voice I read the first legacy, bequeathing “her body to the dust, and her soul to God,” in most pious and pathetic expressions, and of considerable longitude. The second legacy ran: “Item—to my dear cousin, Jonah Barrington, I bequeathe my mother’s wedding-ring and my father’s gold sleeve-buttons, as family keepsakes; also all my father’s books and papers of every description, except bonds, or any securities for money, or contracts;” and so far looked favourable, till, casting my eye over the third legacy, to the wonder of the company, I stopped short, and handing it cautiously to the swaddling preacher (who was present), begged he would be so kind as to read it himself. This office he coyly accepted, and performed it in a drawling whine, and with heavy sighs, that made every body laugh, except myself. In fine, cousin Fanny, after her “soul to God, and her body to the dust,” (the latter of which legacies she could not possibly avoid,) as to all her worldly substance, &c., bequeathed it “to such charitable purposes as her maid Mary might think proper, by and with the spiritual advice and assistance of that holy man, Mr. Clarke.” This pious philosopher never changed a muscle at his good fortune. The will, indeed, could be no surprise either to him or Mrs. Mary. With the aid of the orator’s brother, who was an attorney, (and got snacks,) they had prepared it according to their own satisfaction; and cousin Fanny executed it one evening, after her cordial and prayers had their full operation; and, in a few days more, her disorder put a conclusive termination to any possibility of revoking it.
This affair had its sequel exactly as any rational person might have anticipated. The preacher and Mrs. Mary, after a decent mourning, united their spiritual and temporal concerns, and became flesh of the flesh and bone of the bone; in which happy state of husband and wife (which happy state they had been in many months before the ceremony was thought necessary) they remained nearly two years, when His Reverence, happening to light on a younger and handsomer swaddler, and legatee, after beating Mrs. Mary almost to a jelly, embarked with his new proselyte for America, where, changing his name, curling his hair, colouring his eyebrows, &c. &c., he turned quaker, and is at this moment, I have learned, in good repute at meeting, and solvency as a trader, in the city of Philadelphia.