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known to her friends what was her condition; but arriving in a huge
gilt coach with enormous armorial bearings, was taken by her sister-
in-law and the rest of the county for a person of considerable
property and distinction. For a time, then, and as was right and
proper, Mrs. Barry gave the law at Castle Brady. She ordered the
servants to and fro, and taught them, what indeed they much wanted,
a little London neatness; and 'English Redmond,' as I was called,
was treated like a little lord, and had a maid and a footman to
himself; and honest Mick paid their wages,--which was much more than
he was used to do for his own domestics,--doing all in his power to
make his sister decently comfortable under her afflictions. Mamma,
in return, determined that, when her affairs were arranged, she
would make her kind brother a handsome allowance for her son's
maintenance and her own; and promised to have her handsome furniture
brought over from Clarges Street to adorn the somewhat dilapidated
rooms of Castle Brady.
But it turned out that the rascally landlord seized upon every chair
and table that ought by rights to have belonged to the widow. The
estate to which I was heir was in the hands of rapacious creditors;
and the only means of subsistence remaining to the widow and child
was a rent-charge of L50 upon my Lord Bagwig's property, who had
many turf-dealings with the deceased. And so my dear mother's
liberal intentions towards her brother were of course never
fulfilled.
It must be confessed, very much to the discredit of Mrs. Brady of
Castle Brady, that when her sister-in-law's poverty was thus made
manifest, she forgot all the respect which she had been accustomed
to pay her, instantly turned my maid and man-servant out of doors,
and told Mrs. Barry that she might follow them as soon as she chose.
Mrs. Mick was of a low family, and a sordid way of thinking; and
after about a couple of years (during which she had saved almost all
her little income) the widow complied with Madam Brady's desire. At
the same time, giving way to a just though prudently dissimulated
resentment, she made a vow that she would never enter the gates of
Castle Brady while the lady of the house remained alive within them.
She fitted up her new abode with much economy and considerable
taste, and never, for all her poverty, abated a jot of the dignity
which was her due and which all the neighbourhood awarded to her.
How, indeed, could they refuse respect to a lady who had lived in
London, frequented the most fashionable society there, and had been
presented (as she solemnly declared) at Court? These advantages gave
her a right which seems to be pretty unsparingly exercised in
Ireland by those natives who have it,--the right of looking down
with scorn upon all persons who have not had the opportunity of
quitting the mother-country and inhabiting England for a while.
Thus, whenever Madam Brady appeared abroad in a new dress, her
sister-in-law would say, 'Poor creature! how can it be expected that
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