"I have just witnessed a scene of distress, that I cannot get out of my mind," said Montague.
"What was that?" asked Alice.
"It was an Irish family that occupy a hovel about half a mile from hence. The family consists of the father, Patrick Delanty, his wife and six children, the eldest a daughter, not more than thirteen years of age. They have been but few weeks in town, and are wretchedly poor. The wife is ill of a raging fever, and the two youngest children of measles, from which the others are but just recovered. Delanty is obliged to be out at day-labor, to keep his family from starvation; so that all the care and labor of nursing the sick, and looking after the other children, devolve on the eldest daughter, and a boy, two or three years younger.— Such poverty—such squalid and complicated misery, I have never before witnessed."
"Poor creatures!" said Alice. "But why will they leave their native land, and come here among strangers, where no one cares for them, to endure such misery?"
"To get rid of greater misery at home, cousin Alice!" said Montague.
"O, they are much to be pitied, poor creatures!"—said Alice; "but there are such hordes of them, that it is impossible to afford them effectual relief."
Montague said no more, as he found that the sympathetic cord in his cousin's heart was not touched. He just cast his eyes on Margarette, who was sitting, busily at work, in a recess at the opposite end of the room, to see if her compassion was awakened: but she was diligently plying her needle,—and but for the motion of her hand, he thought she looked exceedingly as if she were made of stone! "Heartless! unfeeling!" he thought, and almost murmured, as he arose and precipitately took leave.
The day next but one, Montague was again at Mr. Claremont's. Neither of the young ladies mentioned the Delantys; for Alice was wholly engrossed in a new novel,—and Montague concluded that Margarette had not even heard that there were any such people. But his own heart was too full of them, not to speak of their situation.
"Cousin Alice," said he, "you are so compassionate that I wonder you do not ask after the welfare of the poor Irish family."
"O, poor creatures! how are they? I have thought of them several times since you were here, and wished they had stayed in their own country, among their own friends, that they might be properly looked after. Have you seen them since you were here last, cousin Hubert?"