Previous - next
should. I did not care for drink, or know the dreadful comfort of it
in those days; but I thought of killing myself and Nora, and most
certainly of making away with Captain Quin!
At last, and at morning, the ball was over. The rest of our ladies
went off in the lumbering creaking old coach; Daisy was brought out,
and Miss Nora took her place behind me, which I let her do without a
word. But we were not half-a-mile out of town when she began to try
with her coaxing and blandishments to dissipate my ill-humour.
'Sure it's a bitter night, Redmond dear, and you'll catch cold
without a handkerchief to your neck.' To this sympathetic remark
from the pillion, the saddle made no reply.
'Did you and Miss Clancy have a pleasant evening, Redmond? You were
together, I saw, all night.' To this the saddle only replied by
grinding his teeth, and giving a lash to Daisy.
'O mercy! you'll make Daisy rear and throw me, you careless creature
you: and you know, Redmond, I'm so timid.' The pillion had by this
got her arm round the saddle's waist, and perhaps gave it the
gentlest squeeze in the world.
'I hate Miss Clancy, you know I do!' answers the saddle; 'and I only
danced with her because--because--the person with whom I intended to
dance chose to be engaged the whole night.'
'Sure there were my sisters,' said the pillion, now laughing
outright in the pride of her conscious superiority; 'and for me, my
dear, I had not been in the room five minutes before I was engaged
for every single set.'
'Were you obliged to dance five times with Captain Quin?' said I;
and oh! strange delicious charm of coquetry, I do believe Miss Nora
Brady at twenty-three years of age felt a pang of delight in
thinking that she had so much power over a guileless lad of fifteen.
Of course she replied that she did not care a fig for Captain Quin:
that he danced prettily, to be sure, and was a pleasant rattle of a
man; that he looked well in his regimentals too; and if he chose to
ask her to dance, how could she refuse him?
'But you refused me, Nora.'
'Oh! I can dance with you any day,' answered Miss Nora, with a toss
of her head; 'and to dance with your cousin at a ball, looks as if
you could find no other partner. Besides,' said Nora--and this was a
cruel, unkind cut, which showed what a power she had over me, and
how mercilessly she used it,--'besides, Redmond, Captain Quin's a
man and you are only a boy!'
'If ever I meet him again,' I roared out with an oath, 'you shall
see which is the best man of the two. I'll fight him with sword or
with pistol, captain as he is. A man indeed! I'll fight any man--
every man! Didn't I stand up to Mick Brady when I was eleven years
old?--Didn't I beat Tom Sullivan, the great hulking brute, who is
nineteen?--Didn't I do for the Scotch usher? O Nora, it's cruel of
you to sneer at me so!'
But Nora was in the sneering mood that night, and pursued her
sarcasms; she pointed out that Captain Quin was already known as a
Previous - next
