When I add to this portraiture of my accomplishments that I was nearly six feet high, with more than a common share of activity and strength for my years, and no inconsiderable portion of good looks, I have finished my sketch, and stand before my reader.
We were in the thick of canvassing the county for the parliamentary seat in my uncle's interest. O'Malley Castle was the centre of operations; while I, a mere stripling, and usually treated as a boy, was entrusted with an important mission, and sent off to canvass a distant relation, Mr. Matthew Blake, who might possibly be approachable by a younger branch of the family, with whom he had never any collision.
I arrived at his house while the company were breakfasting. After the usual shaking of hands and hearty greetings were over, I was introduced to Sir George Dashwood, a tall and singularly handsome man of about fifty, and his daughter, Lucy Dashwood.
If the sweetest blue eyes that ever beamed beneath a forehead of snowy whiteness, over which dark brown and waving hair fell, less in curls than masses of locky richness, could only have known what wild work they were making of my poor heart, Miss Dashwood, I trust, would have looked at her teacup or her muffin rather than at me, as she actually did, on that fatal morning.
Beside her sat a tall, handsome man of about five-and-thirty, or perhaps forty, years of age, with a most soldierly air, who, as I was presented to him, scarcely turned his head, and gave me a half-nod of unequivocal coldness. As I turned from the lovely girl, who had received me with marked courtesy, to the cold air and repelling hauteur of the dark-browed captain, the blood rushed throbbing to my forehead; and as I walked to my place at the table, I eagerly sought his eye, to return him a look of defiance and disdain, proud and contemptuous as his own.
Captain Hammersly, however, never took further notice of me, and I formed a bitter resolution, which I endeavoured to carry into effect during the next day's hunt. Mounted on my best horse, I deliberately led him across the worst and roughest country, river, and hills, and walls, and ditches, till I finished up with a broken head and he with a broken arm, and a horse that had to be slaughtered.
On the fourth day after this adventure I was able to enter the drawing-room again. Sir George Dashwood made the kindest inquiries about my health.
"They tell me you are to be a lawyer, Mr. O'Malley," said he; "and, if so, I must advise you to take better care of your headpiece."
"A lawyer, papa? Oh, dear me!" said his daughter. "I should never have thought of his being anything so stupid."
"Why, silly girl, what would you have a man to be?"