At Merryvale now all was expectation about the anticipated election. The ladies were making up bows of ribbon for their partizans, and Fanny had been so employed all the morning alone in the drawing-room; her pretty fingers pinching, and pressing, and stitching the silken favours, while now and then her hand wandered to a wicker-basket which lay beside her, to draw forth a scissors or a needlecase. As she worked, a shade of thought crossed her sweet face, like a passing cloud across the sun; the pretty fingers stopped--the work was laid down--and a small album gently drawn from the neighbouring basket. She opened the book and read; they were lines of Edward O'Connor's which she drank into her heart; they were the last he had written, which her brother had heard him sing and had brought her THE SNOW I An old man sadly said, "Where's the snow That fell the year that's fled?-- Where's the snow?" As fruitless were the task Of many a joy to ask, As the snow! II The hope of airy birth, Like the snow, Is stain'd on reaching earth, Like the snow: While 't is sparkling in the ray, 'T is melting fast away, Like the snow! III A cold, deceitful thing Is the snow, Though it come on dove-like wing-- The false snow! 'T is but rain disguised appears; And our hopes are frozen tears, Like the snow! A tear _did_ course down Fanny's cheek as she read the last couplet; and closing the book and replacing it in the little basket, she sighed, and said, "Poor fellow!--I wish he were not so sad!" CHAPTER VIII Love is of as many patterns, cuts, shapes, and colours as people's garments; and the loves of Edward O'Connor and Fanny Dawson had very little resemblance to the tender passion which agitated the breast of the Widow Flanagan, and made Tom Durfy her slave. Yet the widow and Tom demand the offices of the chronicler as well as the more elevated pair; and this our veracious history could never get on, if we exhausted all our energies upon the more engaging personages, to the neglect of the rest: your plated handles, scrolls, and mountings are all very well on your carriage, but it could not move without its plain iron bolts.