“An’ what news, Rose?” asks one of her sisters; “sure you’ll tell us every thing; won’t you?”
“Throth, avillish, I have no bad news, any how—an’ as to tellin’ you all—Biddy, lhig dumh, let me alone. No, I have no bad news, God be praised, but good news.”
Kitty’s cheek is again crimson, and her lips, ripe and red as cherries, expand with the sweet soft smile of her country, exhibiting a set of teeth for which many a countess would barter thousands, and giving out a breath more delicious than the fragrance of a summer meadow. Oh, no wonder, indeed, that the kind heart of Rose contains in its recesses a message to her as tender as ever was transmitted from man to woman!
“An’, Kitty, acushla, where’s the welcome from you, that’s my favourite? Now don’t be jealous, childre; sure you all know she is, an’ ever an’ always was.”
“If it’s not upon my lips, it’s in my heart, Rose, an’ from that heart you’re welcome!”
She rises up and kisses Rose, who gives her one glance of meaning, accompanied by the slightest imaginable smile, and a gentle but significant pressure of the hand, which thrills to her heart and diffuses a sense of ecstacy through her whole spirit. Nothing now remains but the opportunity, which is equally sought for by Rose and her, to hear without interruption the purport of her lover’s communication; and this we leave to lovers to imagine.
In Ireland, however odd it may seem, there occur among the very poorest classes some of the hardest and most penurious bargains in matchmaking that ever were heard of or known. Now, strangers might imagine that all this close higgling proceeds from a spirit naturally near and sordid, but it is not so. The real secret of it lies in the poverty and necessity of the parties, and chiefly in the bitter experience of their parents, who, having come together in a state of destitution, are anxious, each as much at the expense of the other as possible, to prevent their children from experiencing the same privation and misery which they themselves felt. Many a time have matches been suspended or altogether broken off because one party refuses to give his son a slip of a pig, or another his daughter a pair of blankets; and it was no unusual thing for a matchmaker to say, “Never mind; I have it all settled but the slip.” One might naturally wonder why those who are so shrewd and provident upon this subject do not strive to prevent early marriages where the poverty is so great. So unquestionably they ought, but it is a settled usage of the country, and one too which Irishmen have never been in the habit of considering as an evil. We have no doubt that if they once began to reason upon it as such, they would be very strongly disposed to check a custom which has been the means of involving themselves and their unhappy offspring in misery, penury, and not unfrequently in guilt itself.
Rose, like many others in this world who are not conscious of the same failing, smelt strongly of the shop; in other words, her conversation had a strong matrimonial tendency. No two beings ever lived so decidedly antithetical to each other in this point of view as the Matchmaker and the Keener. Mention the name of an individual or a family to the Keener, and the medium through which her memory passes back to them is that of her professed employment—a mourner at wakes and funerals.
“Don’t you know young Kelly of Tamlaght?”