Away went Dermot, dragged on by the rest of the boys, while Glorvina, delighted as a child with her new mode of conveyance, laughed with all her heart, and kissed her hand to me as she flew along; while I, trembling for her safety, endeavoured to keep pace with her triumphal chariot, till her wearied, breathless Phaeton, unable to run any further with his lovely, laughing burthen, begged a respite. “How!” said she, “weary of this amusement, and yet you have not at every step been cruelly lashed like your poor dog.” The panting Dermot hung his head, and said in Irish, “the like should not happen again.” “It is enough,” said Glorvina, in the same language--“we are all liable to commit a fault, but let us never forget it is in our power to correct it. And now go to the castle where you shall have a good dinner, in return for the good and pleasant exercise you have procured me.” The boys were as happy as kings. Dermot was unyoked, and the poor dog, wagging his tail in token of his felicity, accompanied the gratified group to the castle. When Glorvina had translated to me the subject of her short dialogue with Dermot, she added, laughing, “Oh! how I should like to be dragged about this way for two or three hours every day: never do I enter into any little folly of this kind, that I do not sigh for those sweet hours of my childhood when I could play the fool with impunity.” “Play the fool!” said I--“and do you call this playing the fool--this dispensation of humanity, this culture of benevolence in the youthful mind, these lessons of truth and goodness, so sweetly, so simply given?” “Nay,” she returned, “you always seem inclined to flatter me into approbation of myself! but the truth is, I was glad to seize on the opportunity of lecturing that urchin Dermot, who, though I praised his humanity, is the very beadle to all the unfortunate animals in the neighbourhood. But I have often had occasion to remark, that, by giving a virtue to these neglected children which they do not possess, I have awakened their emulation to attain it.” “To say that you are an angel,” said I, “is to say a very commonplace thing, which every man says to the woman he either does, or affects to admire; and yet”---- “Nay,”--interrupted she, laying her hand on my arm, and looking up full in my face with that arch glance I have so often caught revelling in her eloquent eye--“I am not emulous of a place in the angelic choir; canonization is more consonant to my _papistical_ ambition; then let me be your saint--your tutelar saint, and”-- “And let me,” interrupted I, impassionately, “let me, like the members of the Greek church, adore my saint, not by prostration, but by a kiss;”--and, for the first time in my life, I pressed my lips to the beautiful hand which still rested on my arm, and from which I first drew a glove that has not since left my bosom, nor been re-demanded by its charming owner.