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THE NEST EGG.
Well, who should buy The Beg, do you think, but a fine lady from Dublin, who had never seen it, and, it's said, sould off all she had, to make up the money for it?—And who should the lady be, but that same young Pierce Veogh was once in love with, but who wouldn't have him, because of his wild doings, and wint and married another?—And this other was dead, and the lady was a widow, and bought The Beg, as we thought when we knew the story, because of Pierce; who was then, nobody knew where.
Down she came, in a few weeks, to take possession; and it's soon she was loved by every soul within three miles of the place. Them that was Pierce Veogh's favourites, she did good to for his sake; and them that he never noticed, she helped for her own: so that there was few but blessed her. She gave Mick Maguire a new gun, when he'd burst the one he had from Pierce, by overloading it, and broke his own arm to boot; and she did something for me, too, as you'll hear, by-and-by, though Pierce and myself never was over and above friendly, because I didn't like his goings-on; and what's more,—for I'll confess my frailty,—in all his spending he never spent a penny upon me.
If I was one of a nation that had to choose a queen by her looks, I'd just pick out the lady who bought The Beg; for I never saw any thing in the wide world so fine and so gracious, and so every thing that's good, and above the general run of women,—and I never saw one in the world that I couldn't kiss,—as herself. She hadn't been at The Beg much more than a week, when one morning she sailed into my place here; her movements was more like those of a fine vessel on a smooth tide, than those of one like us that treads upon the earth; and her eyes was of the colour of the sky on a clear night, and a fine star seemed to be twinkling in the middle of each of them; and, says she,—“God bless all here!” just as a dillosk-girl might, in going into the cabin of a neighbour. I'll never forget her, or the sight of her beautiful small fingers, when she pulled off her glove,—set off, as they were, by a black ring about one of them; and though I'm a poor man, and an ould man, I was in love with her, and she knew it:—that I'd uphould against the finest man that ever stood upon two legs, if I could even stand upon one myself,—but I can't.
She came to do good; and after much talking, says she to Aggie, my niece,—“You're a widow, I hear: is it long you've been so?”