“You'll miss me, Denis,” said his favorite sister, who was also called Susan; “for you'll find no one in Maynewth that will keep your linen so white as I did: but never fear, I'll be always knittin' you stockings; an' every year I'll make you half-a-dozen shirts, and you'll think them more natural nor other shirts, when you know they came from your own home—from them that you love! Won't you, Denis?”
“I will, Susy; and I will love the shirts for the sake of the hands that made them.”
“And I won't allow Susy Connor to help me as she used to do: they'll be all Alley's sewin' and mine.”
“The poor colleen—listen to her!” exclaimed the affectionate father; “indeed you will, Susy; ay, and hem his cravats, that we'll send him ready made an' all.”
“Yes,” replied Denis, “but as to Susy Connor—hem—why, upon considera—he—hem—upon second thoughts, I don't see why you should prevent her from helping you; she's a neighbor's daughter, and a well-wisher, of whose prosperity in life I'd always wish to hear.
“The poor girl's very bad in her health, for the last three weeks,” observed his other sister Alley: “she has lost her appetite, an' is cast down entirely in her spirits. You ought to go an' see her, Denis, before you set out for the college, if it was only on her dacent father's account. When I was tellin' her yisterday that you wor to get the bishop's letter for Maynewth to-morrow, she was in so poor a state of health that she nearly fainted. I had to give her a drink of wather, and sprinkle her face with it. Well, she's a purty crathur, an' a good girl, an' was always that, dear knows!”
“Denis achree,” said his mother, somewhat alarmed, “are you any way unwell? Why your heart's batin' like a new catched chicken! Are you sick, acushla; or are you used to this?”
“It won't signify,” replied Denis, gently raising himself from his mother's arms, “I will sit up, mother; it's but a sudden stroke or two of tremor cordis, produced probably by having my mind too much upon one object.”
“I think,” said his father, “he will be the betther of a little drop of the poteen made into punch, an' for that matter we can all take a sup of it; as there's no one here but ourselves, we will have it snug an' comfortable.”
Nothing resembles an April day more than the general disposition of the Irish people. When old Denis's proposal for the punch was made, the gloom which hung over the family—originating, as it did, more in joy than in soitow—soon began to disappear. Their countenances gradually brightened, by and by mirth stole out, and ere the punch had accomplished its first round, laughter, and jest, and good-humor,—each, in consequence of the occasion, more buoyant and vivacious than usual, were in full play. Denis himself, when animated by the unexcised liquor, threw off his dejection, and' ere the night was half spent found himself in the highest region of pedantry.