Patsey, Minny, and Katey have made friends with the little English people upstairs; the elder of whom, in the course of a month, has as fine a Munster brogue as ever trolled over the lips of any born Corkagian. The old nurse carries out the whole united party to walk, with the exception of the English baby, that jumps about in the arms of a countrywoman of her own. That is, unless one of the four Miss Fagans take her; for four of them there are, four other Miss Fagans, from eighteen downwards to fourteen:—handsome, fresh, lively, dancing, bouncing girls. You may always see two or three of them smiling at the parlour-window, and they laugh and turn away their heads when any young fellow looks and admires them.
Now, it stands to reason that a young widow of five-and-twenty can’t be the mother of four young ladies of eighteen downwards; and, if anybody wants to know how they come to be living with the poor widow their cousin, the answer is, they are on a visit. Peggy the maid says their papa is a gentleman of property, and can ‘spend his eight hundred a year.’
Why don’t they remain with the old gentleman, then, instead of quartering on the poor young widow, who has her own little mouths to feed? The reason is, the old gentleman has gone and married his cook; and the daughters have quitted him in a body, refusing to sit down to dinner with a person who ought by rights to be in the kitchen. The whole family (the Fagans are of good family) take the quarrel up, and here are the young people under shelter of the widow.
Four merrier, tender-hearted girls are not to be found in all Ireland; and the only subject of contention amongst them is, which shall have the English baby; they are nursing it, and singing to it, and dandling it by turns all day long. When they are not singing to the baby, they are singing to an old piano; such an old, wiry, jingling, wheezy piano! It has plenty of work, playing jigs and song accompaniments between meals, and acting as a sideboard at dinner. I am not sure that it is at rest at night either; but have a shrewd suspicion that it is turned into a four-post bed. And for the following reason:—
Every afternoon, at four o’clock, you see a tall old gentleman walking leisurely to the house. He is dressed in a long greatcoat with huge pockets, and in the huge pockets are sure to be some big apples for all the children—the English child amongst the rest, and she generally has the biggest one. At seven o’clock, you are sure to hear a deep voice shouting ‘Paggy!’ in an awful tone—it is the old gentleman calling for his ‘materials’; which Peggy brings without any further ado; and a glass of punch is made, no doubt, for everybody. Then the party separates: the children and the old nurse have long since trampled upstairs; Peggy has the kitchen for her sleeping-apartment; and the four young ladies make it out somehow in the back drawing-room. As for the old gentleman, he reposes in the parlour; and it must be somewhere about the piano, for there is no furniture in the room except that, a table, a few old chairs, a workbox, and a couple of albums.
The English girl’s father met her in the street one day, talking confidentially with a tall old gentleman in a greatcoat. ‘Who’s your friend?’ says the Englishman afterwards to the little girl. ‘Don’t you know him, papa?’ said the child in the purest brogue. ‘Don’t you know him?—That’s Uncle James!’ And so it was: in this kind, poor, generous, barebacked house, the English child found a set of new relations; little rosy brothers and sisters to play with, kind women to take the place of the almost dying mother, a good old Uncle James to bring her home apples and care for her—one and all ready to share their little pittance with her, and to give her a place in their simple friendly hearts. God Almighty bless the widow and her mite, and all the kind souls under her roof!
How much goodness and generosity—how much purity, fine feeling—nay, happiness—may dwell amongst the poor whom we have been just looking at! Here, thank God, is an instance of this happy and cheerful poverty: and it is good to look, when one can, at the heart that beats under the threadbare coat, as well as the tattered old garment itself. Well, please Heaven, some of those people whom we have been looking at are as good, and not much less happy: but though they are accustomed to their want, the stranger does not reconcile himself to it quickly; and I hope no Irish reader will be offended at my speaking of this poverty, not with scorn or ill-feeling, but with hearty sympathy and good-will.
One word more regarding the Widow Fagan’s house. When Peggy brought in coals for the drawing-room fire, she carried them—in what do you think? ‘In a coal-scuttle, to be sure,’ says the English reader, down on you as sharp as a needle.
No, you clever Englishman, it wasn’t a coal-scuttle.