The mob at this time began screeching and hooting, and there's
no knowing how it might have ended, if it was n't for the little
Captain--Morris is his name--that was once quartered at Bruff, and who
happened to be there, and knew us, and he came up and explained who we
were, and got us away to a coach, more dead than alive, Molly.
And so we got back to Brussels that night, in a state of mind and body I
leave you to imagine, K. I. abusing us all the way about the milliner's
bill, the expense of the trip, and the exposure! "It's clear," says he,
"we may leave this city now, for you 'll never recover what you call
your 'position' here, after this day's exploit!" You may conceive how
humbled and broken I was when he dared to say that to me, Molly, and I
did n't so much as give him a word back!
You 'll see from this that life is n't all roses with us; and indeed,
for the last two days I 've done nothing but cry, and Mary Anne the
same; for how we're ever to go to court and be presented now, nobody can
tell! Morris advises K. I. to go into Germany for the summer, and maybe
he is right; but, to tell you the truth, Molly, I can't bear that little
man,--he has a dry, sneering kind of way with him that is odious to me.
Mary Anne, too, hates him.
So Father Maher won't buy "Judy," because she's not in calf. It's just
like him,--he must have everything in this life his own way! Send me the
price of the wool by Purcell; he can get a post-bill for it; and be sure
to dispose of the fruit to the best advantage. Don't make any jam this
year, for I 'd rather have the money than be spending it on sugar. You
'd not believe the straits I 'm put to for a pound or two. It was only
last week I sold four pair of K. I.'s drab shorts and gaiters, and a
brown surtout, to a hawker for a trifle of fifteen francs, and persuaded
him they were stolen out of his drawers! and I believe he has spent
nearly double the money in handbills, offering a reward for the
thief! That's the fruits of his want of confidence, and the secret and
mysterious way he behaves to me! Many 's the time I told him that his
underhand tricks cost him half his income!
I tell him every day it's "no use to be here if we don't live in a
certain style;" and then he says, "I'm quite ready to go back, Mrs. D.
It was never my will that we came here at all." And there he is right,
for it's just Ireland he's fit for! Father Maher and Tom Purcell and Sam
Davis are exactly the company to suit him; but it's very hard that me
and the girls are to suffer for his low tastes!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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