A Rivermouth Romance | Page 5

whispered to Mrs. Connally that
Mr. O'Rourke was "a perfic gintleman," and the men in a body
pronounced him a bit of the raal shamrock. If Mr. O'Rourke was happy
in brewing a punch, he was happier in dispensing it, and happiest of all
in drinking a great deal of it himself. He toasted Mrs. Finnigan, the
landlady, and the late lamented Finnigan, the father, whom he had
never seen, and Miss Biddy Finnigan, the daughter, and a young
toddling Finnigan, who was at large in shockingly scant raiment. He
drank to the company individually and collectively, drank to the absent,
drank to a tin-peddler who chanced to pass the window, and indeed was
in that propitiatory mood when he would have drunk to the health of
each separate animal that came out of the Ark. It was in the midst of the
confusion and applause which followed his song, "The Wearing of the
Grane," that Mr. O'Rourke, the punch being all gone, withdrew

unobserved, and went in quest of Mrs. O'Rourke--with what success the
reader knows.
*****
According to the love-idyl of the period, when Laura and Charles
Henry, after unheard-of obstacles, are finally united, all cares and
tribulations and responsibilities slip from their sleek backs like
Christian's burden. The idea is a pretty one, theoretically, but, like some
of those models in the Patent Office at Washington, it fails to work.
Charles Henry does not go on sitting at Laura's feet and reading
Tennyson to her forever: the rent of the cottage by the sea falls due
with prosaic regularity; there are bakers, and butchers, and babies, and
tax-collectors, and doctors, and undertakers, and sometimes gentlemen
of the jury, to be attended to. Wedded life is not one long amatory
poem with recurrent rhymes of love and dove, and kiss and bliss. Yet
when the average sentimental novelist has supplied his hero and
heroine with their bridal outfit and arranged that little matter of the
marriage certificate, he usually turns off the gas, puts up his shutters,
and saunters off with his hands in his pockets, as if the day's business
were over. But we, who are honest dealers in real life and disdain to
give short weight, know better. The business is by no means over; it is
just begun. It is not Christian throwing off his pack for good and all,
but Christian taking up a load heavier and more difficult than any he
has carried.
If Margaret Callaghan, when she meditated matrimony, indulged in any
roseate dreams, they were quickly put to flight. She suddenly found
herself dispossessed of a quiet, comfortable home, and face to face with
the fact that she had a white elephant on her hands. It is not likely that
Mr. O'Rourke assumed precisely the shape of a white elephant to her
mental vision; but he was as useless and cumbersome and
unmanageable as one.
Margaret and Larry's wedding tour did not extend beyond Mrs.
Finnigan's establishment, where they took two or three rooms and set
up housekeeping in a humble way. Margaret, who was a tidy housewife,
kept the floor of her apartments as white as your hand, the tin plates on

the dresser as bright as your lady-love's eyes, and the cooking-stove as
neat as the machinery on a Sound steamer. When she was not rubbing
the stove with lamp-black she was cooking upon it some savory dish to
tempt the palate of her marine monster. Naturally of a hopeful
temperament, she went about her work singing softly to herself at times,
and would have been very happy that first week if Mr. O'Rourke had
known a sober moment. But Mr. O'Rourke showed an exasperating
disposition to keep up festivities. At the end of ten days, however, he
toned down, and at Margaret's suggestion that he had better be looking
about for some employment he rigged up a fishing-pole, and set out
with an injured air for the wharf at the foot of the street, where he
fished for the rest of the day. To sit for hours blinking in the sun,
waiting for a cunner to come along and take his hook, was as
exhaustive a kind of labor as he cared to engage in. Though Mr.
O'Rourke had recently returned from a long cruise, he had not a cent to
show. During his first three days ashore he had dissipated his three
years' pay. The housekeeping expenses began eating a hole in
Margaret's little fund, the existence of which was no sooner known to
Mr. O'Rourke than he stood up his fishing-rod in one corner of the
room, and thenceforth it caught nothing but cobwebs.
"Divil a sthroke o' work I 'll do," said Mr. O'Rourke, "whin we can live
at aise on our earnin's. Who 'd be afther