Honor OCallaghan | Page 2

woman as
in general she was, did certainly upon this occasion cherish something
very like an active aversion to the little intruder.
The fact is, that Mrs. Sherwood, who had been much captivated by Mr.
O'Callaghan's showy, off-hand manner, his civilities, and his flatteries,
felt, for the first time in her life, that she had been taken in; and being a
peculiarly prudent, cautious personage, of the slow, sluggish, stagnant
temperament, which those who possess it are apt to account a virtue,
and to hold in scorn their more excitable and impressible neighbours,
found herself touched in the very point of honour, piqued, aggrieved,
mortified; and denouncing the father as the greatest deceiver that ever

trod the earth, could not help transferring some part of her hatred to the
innocent child. She was really a good sort of woman, as I have said
before, and every now and then her conscience twitched her, and she
struggled hard to seem kind and to be so: but it would not do.
There the feeling was, and the more she struggled against it, the
stronger, I verily believe, it became. Trying to conquer a deep-rooted
aversion, is something like trampling upon camomile: the harder you
tread it down the more it flourishes.
Under these evil auspices, the poor little Irish girl grew up amongst us.
Not ill-used certainly, for she was fed and taught as we were; and some
forty shillings a year more expended upon the trifles, gloves, and shoes,
and ribbons, which make the difference between nicety and shabbiness
in female dress, would have brought her apparel upon an equality with
ours. Ill-used she was not: to be sure, teachers, and masters seemed to
consider it a duty to reprimand her for such faults as would have passed
unnoticed in another; and if there were any noise amongst us, she, by
far the quietest and most silent person in the house, was, as a matter of
course, accused of making it. Still she was not what would be
commonly called ill-treated; although her young heart was withered
and blighted, and her spirit crushed and broken by the chilling
indifference, or the harsh unkindness which surrounded her on every
side.
Nothing, indeed, could come in stronger contrast than the position of
the young Irish girl, and that of her English companions. A stranger,
almost a foreigner amongst us, with no home but that great
school-room; no comforts, no in-dulgences, no knick-knacks, no
money, nothing but the sheer, bare, naked necessaries of a schoolgirl's
life; no dear family to think of and to go to; no fond father to come to
see her; no brothers and sisters; no kindred; no friends. It was a
loneliness, a desolation, which, especially at breaking-up times, when
all her schoolfellows went joyfully away each to her happy home, and
she was left the solitary and neglected inhabitant of the deserted
mansion, must have pressed upon her very heart The heaviest tasks of
the half year must have been pleasure and enjoyment compared with

the dreariness of those lonesome holidays.
And yet she was almost as lonely when we were all assembled.
Childhood is, for the most part, generous and sympathising; and there
were many amongst us who, interested by her deserted situation, would
have been happy to have been her friends. But Honor was one of those
flowers which will only open in the bright sunshine. Never did
marigold under a cloudy sky shut up her heart more closely than Honor
O'Callaghan. In a word, Honor had really one of the many faults
ascribed to her by Mrs. Sherwood, and her teachers and masters--that
fault so natural and so pardonable in adversity--she was proud.
National and family pride blended with the personal feeling. Young as
she was when she left Ireland, she had caught from the old nurse who
had had the care of her infancy, rude legends of the ancient greatness of
her country, and of the regal grandeur of the O'Connors, her maternal
ancestors; and over such dim traces of Cathleen's legends as floated in
her memory, fragments wild, shadowy, and indistinct, as the
recollections of a dream, did the poor Irish girl love to brood. Visions
of long-past splendour possessed her wholly, and the half-unconscious
reveries in which she had the habit of indulging, gave a tinge of
romance and enthusiasm to her character, as peculiar as her story.
Everything connected with her country had for her an indescribable
charm. It was wonderful how, with the apparently scanty means of
acquiring knowledge which the common school histories afforded,
together with here and there a stray book borrowed for her by her
young companions from their home libraries, and questions answered
from the same source, she had contrived to collect her abundant and
accurate information, as to