Mrs. Oliphant

“ As pleased to come down here with his dear mother as if he had been going to—well, I was going to say the Castle, but that’s not very exciting now-a-days, me dear ma’am.”
“Why, he came to have some fun, mamma,” said Norah. “Don’t you know it’s great fun coming to this tumble-down old place? I like it of all things. One can skip about as one pleases, and nobody minds—instead of having to mend one’s glove, and put up one’s hair, and look as proper as four pins.” ”

“ But I am not an English girl, and I have been brought up abroad; I like to be amused.”
“All the better,” said I. “I like it too, and Everard Stoke is amusing. He is even interesting, sometimes, which is more surprising still.”
“Why should it be surprising?” said Norah. “You all seem to speak as if you patronized Ever—Mr. Stoke, and made allowance for him, and all that; whereas,” said the girl, flashing up into full animation, “there is not a man all about can hold a candle to him! Sure you know it as well as me! They are all old fogies, or young fogies, which are worse. ”

“ And the comfort it would be to see one of ye there.”
“But unless people—like each other,” said I, seeing it was my turn to say something, “even a nice place would not make them happy—” and broke off here like a fool, having made my little conventional speech.
“A nice place goes a long way, me dear ma’am,” said Lady Louisa, with that mellow, warm Irish worldliness, which somehow does not feel so abhorrent as the ordinary type; “and it does you a vast deal of good, take me word for it, to have plenty of money. ”

“ Everard was Mrs. Stoke’s eldest son: they were people of the very best connections, but poor—so poor that they had to live in a little cottage and practice the most rigid economy, though they “counted cousins” with half the people in the peerage. Everard had had every advantage in education, people thinking naturally that the eldest son was his mother’s best prop, and that he would be glad to be able to help his own. And no doubt some boys are a help and comfort to every one belonging to them; just as there are others who pull everybody down who has ever attempted to help them. ”

“ Now don’t ye agree with me?”
“It depends on what the young ladies think,” said I, so much amazed that I really could not for the moment see the fun, notwithstanding the dancing laughter in Norah’s eyes.
“Ah, then, and what do they know?” said Lady Louisa, “a pack of girls! Norah, me child, sit down and be quiet, do, or the ladies will think ye a tomboy, and it’s not far wrong they would be. It’s a young woman’s duty to marry, as I always tell them, and I don’t see that there’s much prospect here, where you’ve no gentlemen to speak of—unless it’s the officers. ”

“ After the little glimpse we had been having of the Mansion and its inmates, there was something quite harmonious in that hole in Norah’s veil.
“But Norah is quite particular about her gloves, I assure you,” said Miss Beresford. “She is not such a wild Irish girl as people think, though she will run about. Mamma has no proper maid just now—”
“Ah,” sighed Lady Louisa, “don’t remind me of it, me dear. I’ve never had a proper maid, me dear ladies, I give you my word, since that fool of a girl went and married under me very nose, as it were. They will marry, the fools! ”

“ They’re silly girls, more’s the pity, as I tell them every day.”
“When a man is a widower so young as that,” said Lady Denzil, “I am always sorry for him. It is bad for people beginning over again, even if there was nothing more.”
“But he needn’t begin over again. Why can’t he stay as he is?” said Miss Beresford, with a little prim consciousness, and Norah clapped her hands and went off into wild laughter most exhilarating to hear.
“I would if I were him,” she said, “if it was only for the fun of cheating mamma and you. But the man is old,—he’s five-and-thirty. ”

“ We are always curious about a new neighbor on the Green. There are not many of us, and nice people are always an acquisition; whereas, on the contrary, when they are not nice, as has happened now and then, it is very uncomfortable for us all. Personally, the first that I saw of the Beresfords was Norah. Every afternoon when I went out, for the first fortnight after their arrival, I met a young lady who was a stranger to me, and who must, I knew, be one of the new people at the Mansion. ”

“ He might be one’s grandfather—and a widower. If I were Prissy, I know what I should say.”
“You would stop till you were asked, me dear,” said Lady Louisa; “and so will your sister—and sure it’s the height of bad breeding to be speaking of a thing Mrs. Mulgrave hasn’t heard of till now. It’s Col. Fitzgerald, me dear ma’am, that’s come to the Castle—a cousin of their own, and ye hear how they’re making fun of him. His wife, poor little soul, died within the year, and ye may take me word, being a young man, he’s looking out again. ”

“ Beresford would have called on Sir Thomas, me dear Lady, but for his headaches. Sure we all know what a man is when he is ill. I You can’t tell how I’m hoping the place will suit him. We’ve done nothing but wander about since me children were babies. As for our own country, it’s out of the question. The damp, and the heat, and the cold, and altogether. But I hear you’ve a fine bracing air on the Green?”
“Yes,” said Lady Denzil and myself, both together, but there was, of course, a certain hesitation in our voices, which Lady Louisa was much too sharp not to observe. ”

“ No doubt, one falls upon a Scotch house here and there in the quiet parts of England; but I never knew a village yet without its Irish family. And there was one accordingly at Dinglefield Green.
Almost as much as a matter of course, it was in the funny, tumble-down house at the east end of the Green, which somebody, I suppose in mockery, had nicknamed the Mansion, that they established themselves. The house must have had another name for formal purposes; but it never was called anything but the Mansion among us. It stood in a little, overgrown, very weedy garden; and I know it was damp. ”

“ You and I ought to know that.”
“You are always the one to turn against him,” said her mother. But it was not so easy to silence Lottie as me.
“Ever since the time when he would break our dolls,” said Lottie, with a little bitterness. “If he liked it, he would break Norah’s heart in the same way, and throw the fragments from him. Do you mean to say you do not know your own son, after all these years?”
“Oh, Lottie, how cruel you are to me!” cried Mrs. Stoke. That was all the satisfaction I could get. I begged them not to tell Everard, so as to rouse his vanity ”

“ I hate dull people, uneducated or not, which I fear is a very unchristian sentiment when one thinks how many of our fellow-creatures are very dull—and I love intelligence about all things, without caring much about its amount of education. ”

“ Miss Beresford began, with a little flash of spirit, “nobody ever saw me with my dress falling off my shoulders; though I don’t sit down to dinner like a tomboy that must always be running about.”
“Ah, then, don’t be vexed, Prissy dear,” said Norah. “It was only for fun. If one couldn’t make fun of it, one would be furious,” cried the little vixen, suddenly clenching her hands. “The man—the brute! ”

“ Stoke, in her offended and stately tone. “I know you mean well, dear; but why should my boy take any trouble about such a girl as Norah Beresford? With his connections, he might look a great deal higher. She has not a penny; and her family is good, of course, but a poor Irish family. It would be nothing to us to marry into the Clantorry connection. It certainly is not worth Everard’s while. ”

“ I have no doubt it was that peep which determined Lady Louisa; and as she knew nobody on the Green, it was impossible for us to warn her that things were not quite so satisfactory within.
However, they came and settled down in summer; after the season, Lady Louisa said. “I hate it myself, me dear,” she informed us all; “I’m an old woman, and what’s thim balls and kettle-drums to me? Though I don’t quarrel with a good dinner when it takes that form, sure it’s for them, poor things. You can’t put an old head on young shoulders ”

“ It is nothing political, though it may have a connection with Irish politics, for anything I can tell. It is the immense, the extraordinary number of Irish gentry afloat upon the world. I never was in a country neighborhood in England where there were not two or three families, at least; and every one who has ever lived abroad knows what heaps there are at every (so-called) English center, where living is supposed to be cheap, and there is a little society. One stumbles against them wherever one goes ”

“ There are some men who are more attractive in their first youth than at any other age; and some whom life so moulds and stimulates, that they who were stupid and disagreeable at twenty, are at thirty interesting men of the world. Everard had never been a nice boy. ”

“ She is Lady Louisa if she lived in a garret. She can't be mistaken; and they take the good of their own mishaps, and see the fun of them just as we do, whereas our mishaps only amuse our neighbors, not ourselves,” Lady Denzil added. It was very true, perhaps; but one did not like to hear such a sentiment from my Lady's lips.
And before a week was over, as might have been expected, the Green rang with stories of the Irish family. “Fancy, she says Colonel Fitzgerald is a widower with £10,000 a year, and her daughters may as well have the chance as another,” Mrs. ”

“ Sometimes one of the sons came down from town, and sometimes other Irish families—very fine, shabby, homely people like themselves, with queer old gowns, and heavy old chains, and bracelets, and titles—used to come to see them. ”

“ He is nothing to you, and can never be anything to you; but all the same, you ought to estimate him justly. Everard Stoke has been a bad son and a bad brother—he has been—”
“And what did they ever do for him?” said Norah, with a toss of her head in defiance. “Why should he take them up on his shoulders when they don’t want it? You are seeing with their eyes, and not your own nice kind ones, Mrs. ”