Honor OCallaghan | Page 4

general neglect might pass for kindness.
But she had returned to France. For no one else did Honor profess the
slightest interest Accordingly, she left the house where she had passed
nearly all her life, without expressing any desire to hear again of its
inmates, and never wrote a line to any of them.

We did hear of her, however, occasionally. Rumours reached us, vague
and distant, and more conflicting even than distant rumours are wont to
be. She was distinguished at the vice-regal court, a beauty and a wit;
she was married to a nobleman of the highest rank; she was a nun of the
order of Mercy; she was dead.
And as years glided on, as the old school passed into other hands, and
the band of youthful companions became more and more dispersed, one
of the latter opinions began to gain ground among us, when two or
three chanced to meet, and to talk of old schoolfellows. If she had been
alive and in the great world, surely some of us should have heard of her.
Her having been a Catholic, rendered her taking the veil not improbable;
and to a person of her enthusiastic temper, the duties of the sisters of
Mercy would have peculiar charms.
As one of that most useful and most benevolent order, or as actually
dead, we were therefore content to consider her, until, in the lapse of
years and the changes of destiny, we had ceased to think of her at all.
The second of this present month of May was a busy and a noisy day in
my garden. All the world knows what a spring this has been. The
famous black spring commemorated by Gilbert White can hardly have
been more thoroughly ungenial, more fatal to man or beast, to leaf and
flower, than this most miserable season, this winter of long days, when
the sun shines as if in mockery, giving little more heat than his cold
sister the moon, and the bitter north-east produces at one and the same
moment the incongruous annoyances of biting cold and suffocating
dust Never was such a season. The swallows, nightingales, and cuckoos
were a fortnight after their usual time. I wonder what they thought of it,
pretty creatures, and how they made up their minds to come at all!--and
the sloe blossom, the black thorn winter as the common people call it,
which generally makes its appearance early in March along with the
first violets, did not whiten the hedges this year until full two months
later,* In short, everybody knows that this has been a most villanous
season, and deserves all the ill that can possibly be said of it. But the
second of May held forth a promise which, according to a very usual
trick of English weather, it has not kept; and was so mild and smiling

and gracious, that, without being quite so foolish as to indulge in any
romantic and visionary expectation of ever seeing summer again, we
were yet silly enough to be cheered by the thought that spring was
coming at last in good earnest.
* It is extraordinary how some flowers seem to obey the season, whilst
others are influenced by the weather. The hawthorn, certainly nearly
akin to the sloe blossom, is this year rather forwarder, if anything, than
in common years; and the fritillary, always a May flower, is painting
the water meadows at this moment in company with "the blackthorn
winter;" or rather is nearly over, whilst its cousin german, the tulip, is
scarcely showing for bloom in the warmest exposures and most
sheltered borders of the garden.
In a word, it was that pleasant rarity a fine day; and it was also a day of
considerable stir, as I shall attempt to describe hereafter, in my small
territories.
In the street too, and in the house, there was as much noise and bustle
as one would well desire to hear in our village.
The first of May is Belford Great Fair, where horses and cows are sold,
and men meet gravely to transact grave business; and the second of
May is Belford Little Fair, where boys and girls of all ages, women and
children of all ranks, flock into the town, to buy ribbons and dolls and
balls and gingerbread, to eat cakes and suck oranges, to stare at the
shows, and gaze at the wild beasts, and to follow merrily the merry
business called pleasure.
Carts and carriages, horse-people and foot-people, were flocking to the
fair; unsold cows and horses, with their weary drivers, and labouring
men who, having made a night as well as a day of it, began to think it
time to find their way home, were coming from it; Punch was being
exhibited at one