Φευ, ϕευ! _Modo flens, modo flans, Magico_ ελελευ _Cor et aurem vel lapidi dans!_ DARBY THE SWIFT; OR, THE LONGEST WAY ROUND IS THE SHORTEST WAY HOME. CHAPTER II. "Aspettar' e non venire!" The Sunday after Darby _lingeringly_ started, I began to think it would be just as well to make "assurance doubly sure;" so I despatched a letter by post to my friend at Bally----, conveying similar instructions and advice to those contained in that entrusted to "_the running footman_" of my establishment. In three days I received a satisfactory answer, so I was at rest upon that point; but, as to Darby, I was quite at a loss. I turned over and over in my mind the various mishaps that might have befallen him by the way; but all to no purpose. I called up Eileen, and asked her what she thought about it. Her replies, mixed up, as they were, with her wild immoderate laughter, afforded me nothing beyond a sympathy with her mirth, which certainly was most infective. Reader, I am not a portrait-painter; but, nevertheless, I will attempt to give you an outline of Eileen. In the first place, she was a poor girl, (else she would not have been _my_ servant,) born of honest parents; but, if fate had placed her in a higher sphere, she had natural accomplishments enough to have graced it,--namely, youth, beauty, and health,--and, beyond these, an intellectual, though uneducated, refinement of thought, when, _by chance_, she was serious; for gaiety seemed to be an indispensable element of her being. She was eighteen years of age,--well, what do I say?--beautifully formed, had eyes like violets, cheeks like roses, hair, when it was dishevelled (despite Goldsmith's satire), like a weeping willow in a sunset, and--but, hold! I must not go further, lest I be suspected of being enamoured of the original; so I will give up the remaining parts of the picture, and leave them to your imagination! The Friday after Darby's setting out I was sitting in my room, very quietly poring over something or other of no importance,--I forget exactly what, but I think it was some speech in the House of Lords,--when a knock at the door agreeably disturbed me from an incipient somnolency, occasioned by a new and unprofitable line of reading. "Come in!" said I. "Who is it? and what do you want?" "It's only _me_, sir," said Eileen, laughing, as usual. "There's a cr_a_ther below that wants to speak to you, sir." "Who is it?" said I. "I don't well know, sir," replied she; "but I think he's some relation to poor Darby, that ye sent to Bally---- last Friday afternoon." "Oh! then send him up; he may account in some way for the extraordinary absence of his relative, said I. "Sure, an' it's myself, an' no relation at all," shouted Darby from below, indignantly. "_Oh! widdy-eelish!_" cried Eileen, breaking out into her hearty wild laugh, that was sure to set at defiance anything like gravity!