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can doubt your courage; but Mick and I will see you home for all
that.'
'Why, you'll not be home till morning, boys. Kilwangan's a good ten
mile from here.'
'We'll sleep at Quin's quarters,' replied Ulick: 'WE'RE GOING TO
STOP A WEEK THERE.'
'Thank you,' says Quin, very faint; 'it's very kind of you.'
'You'll be lonely, you know, without us.'
'Oh yes, very lonely!' says Quin.
'And in ANOTHER WEEK, my boy,' says Ulick (and here he whispered
something in the Captain's ear, in which I thought I caught the
words 'marriage,' 'parson,' and felt all my fury returning again).
'As you please,' whined out the Captain; and the horses were
quickly brought round, and the three gentlemen rode away.
Fagan stopped, and, at my uncle's injunction, walked across the old
treeless park with me. He said that after the quarrel at dinner, he
thought I would scarcely want to see the ladies that night, in which
opinion I concurred entirely; and so we went off without an adieu.
'A pretty day's work of it you have made, Master Redmond,' said he.
'What! you a friend to the Bradys, and knowing your uncle to be
distressed for money, try and break off a match which will bring
fifteen hundred a year into the family? Quin has promised to pay off
the four thousand pounds which is bothering your uncle so. He takes
a girl without a penny--a girl with no more beauty than yonder
bullock. Well, well, don't look furious; let's say she IS handsome--
there's no accounting for tastes,--a girl that has been flinging
herself at the head of every man in these parts these ten years
past, and MISSING them all. And you, as poor as herself, a boy of
fifteen--well, sixteen, if you insist--and a boy who ought to be
attached to your uncle as to your father'--
'And so I am,' said I.
'And this is the return you make him for his kindness! Didn't he
harbour you in his house when you were an orphan, and hasn't he
given you rent-free your fine mansion of Barryville yonder? And now,
when his affairs can be put into order, and a chance offers for his
old age to be made comfortable, who flings himself in the way of him
and competence?--You, of all others; the man in the world most
obliged to him. It's wicked, ungrateful, unnatural. From a lad of
such spirit as you are, I expect a truer courage.'
'I am not afraid of any man alive,' exclaimed I (for this latter
part of the Captain's argument had rather staggered me, and I
wished, of course, to turn it--as one always should when the enemy's
too strong); 'and it's _I_ am the injured man, Captain Fagan. No man
was ever, since the world began, treated so. Look here--look at this
riband. I've worn it in my heart for six months. I've had it there
all the time of the fever. Didn't Nora take it out of her own bosom
and give it me? Didn't she kiss me when she gave it me, and call me
her darling Redmond?'
'She was PRACTISING,' replied Mr. Fagan, with a sneer. 'I know
women, sir. Give them time, and let nobody else come to the house,
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