“Do you mind Mary Considine, who you used to call the blue-bell of the Shannon? She was the beauty of the place, I have heard, when she married her own first cousin, Ned Considine? don’t you also mind telling me how cruel hard she was to be pleased; and how, after she had married him, she said she intended taking a house, but changed her mind, and took Ned, and was greatly disappointed in taking him, for he was very deaf? “Well, who should I chance to find out but this very Mr. and Mrs. Considine; and indeed it’s little remains of beauty she has now; the country, or rather the town life, does not agree any how with beauty, living as they do, at the back of ‘God speed,’ in a small court; though, as you will see by’n bye, they have lashings[21] of money: they’ve one son and a daughter. I met the young girl (she was born to them, I may say, in their old age, a last rose of their summer) at mass, and I think we knew each other by nature: my mistress gave me leave to run over and see her, and when she came to me took great delight in her smiling, innocent face, and the sweet voice I told her she had; and she sang some of the Irish melodies like an angel, if you can think of an angel singing any thing but holy psalms. And this young Mary is well brought up, quite above the common; reading and writing is nothing to her; and as to other accomplishments she’s wonderful; and can tell every fortune out of a book, except her own! Now, among the many prides her mother has gathered, the one that bothers Mary the most, is that she does not like any body to think she is Irish; she thinks she _turns her tongue_ so purty on the English, and as my poor mistress says (for she heard her at it) with a brogue, a rale Cork brogue; not the same as our pretty, delicate Leinster accent; but (as the mistress says) ‘a brogue strong enough to carry St. Paul’s to St. Peter’s,’ and so I thought, _particularly now, when it’s on the road_. My mistress says it’s quite absurd to look at her courtesey; and when you talk to her of her country, to hear her cry out—‘Why then, how did you know I was Irish?’ The Irish divert my poor mistress a great deal. She encourages me to tell all about my country, and she has been more like a mother than a lady to Mary Considine.