Light O' the Morning: The Story of an Irish Girl Part 42

"What could you expect her to be? You have behaved very badly."

"I don't think so. I did the only possible thing to save Nora's heart from breaking."

"It seems to me," said Mr. Hartrick slowly, "that you all think of nothing but the heart of Nora. I am almost sorry now that I ever asked her to come to us in England."

"Oh, it's home again; it's home again!" cried the Irish girl as she paced up and down the platform. "Molly, do listen to the brogue. Isn't it just delicious? Come along, and let's talk to this poor old Irish beggar."

"Oh, but he doesn't look at all pleasant," said Molly, backing a little.

"Bless the crayther, but he is pleasant," said Nora. "I must go and have a chat with him." She caught hold of Molly's hand, and dragged her to the edge of the pavement, where an old man, with almost blind eyes, was seated in front of a large basket of rosy apples.

"And how are you this morning, father?" said Nora.

"Oh, then, it's the top of the morning to yez, honey," was the instant reply. "And how is yourself?"

"Very well indeed," said Nora.

"Then it's I that am delighted to see yez, though see yez I can't. Oh, then, I hope that it's a long life and plenty you'll have before you, my sweet, dear, illigant young lady--a good bed to lie on, and plenty to eat and drink. If you has them, what else could ail yez? Good-by to yez; good-by to yez."

Nora slipped a couple of pence into his hand.

"The blessings of the Vargin and all the Saints be on your head, miss.

Oh! it's I that am glad to see yez. G.o.d's blessing on yez a thousand times."

Nora took the old man's hand and wrung it. He raised the white little hand to his lips and kissed it.

"There now," he said, "I have kissed yez; and these lips shan't see wather again for many a long day--that they shan't. I wouldn't wash off the taste of your hand, honey, for a bag of yellow gold."

"What an extraordinary man!" said Molly. "Have you known him all your life?"

"Known him all my life!" said Nora. "Never laid eyes on him before; that's the way we always talk to one another. Oh, I can tell you we love each other here in Ireland."

"It seems so," answered Molly, in some astonishment. "Dear me! if you address a total stranger so, how will you speak to those you really love?"

"You wait and see," answered Nora, her dark-blue eyes s.h.i.+ning, and a mist of tears dimming their brightness; "you wait and see. Ah, it's past words we are sometimes; but you wait and you'll soon see."

Mr. O'Shanaghgan was p.r.o.nounced better, although Mr. Hartrick had to admit that he was weak and fretful; and, now that Nora had come, it was extremely likely that her presence would do her father a sight of good.

"I knew it, Uncle George," she answered as they seated themselves in the railway carriage preparatory to going back to O'Shanaghgan--"I knew it, and that was why I came. You, uncle, are very wise," she added; "and yours is a beautiful, neat, orderly country; and you are very kind, and very clever; and you have been awfully good to the Irish girl--awfully good; and she is very ignorant; and you know a great deal; but one thing she does know best, and that is, the love and the longing in the heart of her own dear father. Oh, hurrah! I'm home again; I'm home again! Erin go bragh! Erin go bragh!"

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE WILD IRISH.

The somewhat slow Irish train jogged along its way; it never put itself out, did that special train, starting when it pleased, and arriving when it chose at its destination. Its guard, Jerry by name, was of a like mind with itself; there was no hurry about Jerry; he took the world "aisy," as he expressed it.

"What's the good of fretting?" he used to say. "What can't be cured must be endured. I hurry no man's cattle; and my train, she goes when she likes, and I aint going to hurry her, not I."

On one occasion Jerry was known to remark to a somewhat belated traveler:

"Why, then, miss, is it hurrying ye are to meet the train? Why, then, you can take your time."

"Oh, Jerry!" said this anxious person, fixing her eyes on his face in great excitement, "I forgot a most important parcel at a shop half a mile away."

"Run and fetch it, then, honey," replied Jerry, "and I'll keep her a bit longer."

This the lady accordingly did. When she returned, the heads of all the other angry pa.s.sengers were out of the windows expostulating with Jerry as to the cause of the delay.

"Hurry up, miss," he said then. He popped her into a compartment, and she, as he called the train, moved slowly out of the station.

At times, too, without the smallest provocation, Jerry would stop this special train because a little "pigeen" had got off one of the trucks and was running along the line. He and the porter shouted and raced after the animal, caught it, and brought it back to the train. On another occasion he calmly informed a rather important pa.s.senger, "Ye had best get out here, for she's bust." "She" happened to be the engine.

Into this train now got English Molly and Irish Nora. Mr. Hartrick p.r.o.nounced it quite the vilest service he had ever traveled by. He began to grumble the moment he got into the train.

"It crawls," he said; "and it absolutely has the cheek to call itself an express."

But Nora, with her head out of the window, was shouting to Jerry, who came toward her full of blessings, anxious to shake her purty white hand, and telling her that he was as glad as a shower of gould to have her back again in the old country.

At last, however, the slow, very slow journey came to an end; and just after sunset the party found themselves at the little wayside station.

Here a sight met Nora's eyes which displeased her exceedingly. Instead of the old outside car which her father used to drive, with the shabby old retainer, whose livery had long ago seen its best days, there arrived a smart groom, in the newest of livery, with a c.o.c.kade in his hat. He touched his hat respectfully to Mr. Hartrick, and gave a quick glance round at Nora and Molly.

"Is the brougham outside, Dennis?" was Mr. Hartrick's response.

"Yes, sir; it has been waiting for half an hour; the train is a bit late, as usual, sir."

"You need not tell me that this train is ever in time," said Mr.

Hartrick. "Well, girls, come along; I told Dennis to meet us, and here we are."

Molly thought nothing at all of the neat brougham, with its pair of spirited grays; she was accustomed to driving in the better-cla.s.s of carriage all her life; but Nora turned first pale and then crimson. She got into the carriage, and sat back in a corner; tears were br.i.m.m.i.n.g to her eyes.

"This is the first. How am I to bear all the rest?" she said to herself.

Mr. Hartrick, who had hoped that Nora would be pleased with the brougham, with Dennis himself, with the whole very stylish get-up, was mortified at her silence, and, taking her hand, tried to draw her out.

"Well, little girl," he said, "I hope you will like the improvements I have made in the Castle. I have done it all at your instigation, remember."

"At my instigation?" cried Nora. "Oh, no, Uncle George, that you have not."

He looked at her in some amazement, then closed his lips, and said nothing more. Molly longed to get her father alone, in order to explain Nora's peculiar conduct.

"It is difficult for an Englishman to understand her," thought Molly.

"I do, and I think her altogether charming; but father, who has gone to this enormous expense and trouble, will be put out if she does not show a little grat.i.tude. I will tell her that she must; I will take the very first opportunity."

And now they were turning in at the well-known gates. These gates were painted white, whereas they had been almost reduced to their native wood. The avenue was quite tidy, no weeds anywhere; but Nora almost refused to look out. One by one the familiar trees seemed to pa.s.s by her as she was bowled rapidly along in the new brougham, as if they were so many ghosts saying good-by. But then there was the roar--the real, real, grand roar--of the Atlantic in her ears. No amount of tidiness, nothing could ever alter that sound.