Finding himself once more approaching the sunshine of favor, he hastily scrambled to his feet, and, before I could intercept his movement, had commenced to rub me down as if I were one of the quadrupeds under his especial care, accompanying each vigorous rub with that purring sound wherein the groom proper delights to indulge.
“Bad cess to it for dirt! it ‘ill never come out,” he began, as, with a slap that brought tears to my eyes, he endeavored to remove the dust from the back of my coat.
“Silence, sir! Go to your box!” I shouted, as I handed Miss Hawthorne into the shandradan, placing her father beside her, and my miserable, humiliated self opposite directly beneath the perilous influence of her violet eyes.
“I trust, Miss Hawthorne,” I blurted, as we started for Kilkenley, “that you are not too deeply influenced by first impressions?”
“Will you permit me to be very Irish, and answer your question by putting another? Are you?”
Despite my late discomfiture, my unkempt hair, my gloveless hands, and general seediness, I had sufficient grace within me to gaze for one brief second into her lovely eyes until red as a rose was she, and reply with a well-toned emphasis: “Most decidedly.”
I then, in a disjointed and desultory way, endeavored to explain why so shaky a vehicle had been sent to the station; why Peter O’Brien’s hat was so brown and bore such traces of snail-creeping from brim to crown; why I had turned out so shabbily; why the horses were so slow—in a word, it was the old story of qui s’excuse s’accuse, and my explanations, such as they were, will ever remain a matter of the profoundest mystery to myself, as I never by any possibility could recall their tenor to my memory.
I believe that during the drive Mr. Hawthorne spoke a good deal of my uncle, of London, Parliament, late hours, divisions, of the Home-Rule question, and upon several other equally agreeable and interesting topics, all of which seemed to afford the most exquisite delight to Peter O’Brien, who sat perched sideways upon the box, with one eye approvingly upon the “mimber” and the other skewise upon the road; but as for me, I was so lost in contemplating the charms of my vis-à-vis that the eloquence of the member for Doodleshire was as completely wasted as if he were addressing Mr. Speaker himself.
Miss Hawthorne only spoke upon two occasions—once to comment upon the beauty of the foliage at Ballyknockscroggery, the name amusing her immensely, and which she endeavored to repeat with a childlike glee; and once to ask about my mother—but the sounds were as music, and my ears quaffed the delicious, dreamy draught with greedy avidity. How those nine miles passed I never knew; they seemed but so many yards.
Peter kept “a trot for the avenue,” and brought us to a standstill with a jerk that spoke volumes in favor of the anxiety of the screws for a respite from their labors. I handed the young and lovely girl to my mother, who stood upon the steps awaiting our approach, and, having escorted Mr. Hawthorne to his room, retired to my own in a whirlwind of new and pleasing emotion—ay, new and pleasing indeed!