It had been announced that the tour was to include London, the English lakes, Scotland, and Ireland. Bertie voted London a bore, the lakes a nuisance, the land of cakes nowhere, and declared in favor of a few days in Ireland. With a sigh, as though tearing up his heart by the roots, he took his departure from Paris.
“I shall never, never see her again,” he groaned, and was silent the whole way to Calais.
Kirwan fondly imagined that London would shake off this glamour, and did his uttermost to bring all the attractions of the modern Babylon into bold relief; but four days seemed so thoroughly to weary his nephew that it was resolved to start for Ireland without any further delay.
A glorious evening found them pacing the deck of the mail steamer Connaught, en route from Holyhead to Kingstown. Before them lay the Dublin mountains, bathed in glorious greens, yellows, and purples. Away to the left stretched the Wicklow hills, guarded by the twin sugar-loaves and backed by lordly Djouce. To the right the Hill of Howth, the famous battlefield of Clontarf, and in the smoky distance the city of Dublin. Kingstown, its white terraces sloping to the sea; Dalkey, its villas peeping timidly forth from the fairest verdure-clad groves; Killiney, lying in the lap of a heather-caressed mountain; Bray, like a string of pearls on the ocean’s edge; the dark-blue waters of the bay, dotted here and there with snowy yachts, or with the russet brown of the Skerries fishing-smacks—what a coup-d’œil!
“It is glorious,” murmured Bertie, as, leaning on the railing of the bridge, he drained this cup of loveliness to the very dregs.
Arrived at Dublin, they put up at the Shelborne Hotel, in Stephen’s Green, whither they were borne from the dingy station at Westland Row on an outside car that jingled, rattled, creaked, and groaned at every revolution of its rickety wheels.
“What’s this fur?” demanded the tatterdemalion driver, got up in a cast-off suit of Con the Shaughraun, as he glanced from half a crown lying upon the palm of his horny hand to Kirwan and Bertie.
“What’s this fur at all, at all?”
“It’s your fare, my man,” said Kirwan.
“Me fare? An yez come from Amerikey?”