The Collegians | Page 7

embarrassed on the other, than was usual at the morning meetings of the father and daughter. But when she told him, that she had been only to the chapel, the old man was perfectly satisfied, for he knew that Eily would as readily think of telling a falsehood to the priest, as she would to her father. And when Mihil O'Connor heard that people were at the chapel, he generally concluded (poor old man!) that it was only to pray they went there.
In the meantime Myles Murphy renewed his proposals to Eily, and succeeded in gaining over the father to his interests. The latter was annoyed at his daughter's obstinate rejection of a fine fellow like Myles, with a very comfortable property, and pressed her either to give consent to the match or a good reason for her refusal. But this request, though reasonable, was not complied with: and the rope-maker, though not so hot as Capulet, was as much displeased at the contumacy of his daughter. Eily, on her part, was so much afflicted at the anger of her only parent, that it is probable her grief would have made away with her if she had not prevented that catastrophe by making away with herself.
On the fair day of Garryowen, after sustaining a long and distressing altercation with her father and her mountain suitor, Eily O'Connor threw her blue cloak over her shoulders and walked into the air. She did not return to dinner, and her father felt angry at what he thought a token of resentful feeling. Night came, and she did not make her appearance. The poor old man in an agony of terror reproached himself for his vehemence, and spent the whole night in recalling with a feeling of remorse every intemperate word which he had used in the violence of dispute. In the morning, more like a ghost than a living being, he went from the house of one acquaintance to another to enquire after his child. No one however had seen her, except Foxy Dunat, the haircutter, and he had only caught a glimpse of her as she passed his door on the previous evening. It was evident that she was not to return. Her father was distracted. Her young admirers feared that she had got privately married, and run away with some shabby fellow. Her female friends insinuated that the case might be still worse, and some pious old people shook their heads when the report reached them, and said they knew what was likely to come of it, when Eily O'Connor left off attending her daily mass in the morning, and went to the dance at Garryowen.
* Little Mary Tierney.
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How Mr. Daly The Middleman Sat Down to Breakfast
THE DALYS (a very respectable family in middle life) occupied, at the time of which we write, a handsome cottage on the Shannon side, a few miles from the suburban district above-mentioned.
They had assembled, on the morning of Eily's disappearance, a healthy and blooming household of all sizes, in the principal sitting room for a purpose no less important than that of dispatching breakfast. It was a favourable moment for any one who might be desirous of sketching a family picture. The windows of the room, which were thrown up for the purpose of admitting the fresh morning air, opened upon a trim and sloping meadow that looked sunny and cheerful with the bright green aftergrass of the season. The broad and sheety river washed the very margin of the little field, and bore upon its quiet bosom, (which was only ruffled by the circling eddies that encountered the advancing tide,) a variety of craft, such as might be supposed to indicate the approach to a large commercial city. Majestic vessels, floating idly on the basined flood, with sails half furled, in keeping with the languid beauty of the scene; lighters burthened to the water's edge with bricks or sand; large rafts of timber, borne onward towards the neighbouring quays under the guidance of a shipman's boat-hook; pleasure-boats, with gaudy pennons hanging at peak and topmast; or turf boats with their unpicturesque and ungraceful lading, moving sluggishly furward, while their black sails seemed gasping for a breath to fill them; such were the incidents that gave a gentle animation to the prospect immediately before the eyes of the cottage-dwellers. On the farther side of the river arose the Cratloe hills, shadowed in various places by a broken cloud, and rendered beautiful by the chequered appearance of the ripening tillage, and the variety of hues that were observable along their wooded sides. At intervals, the front of a handsome mansion brightened up in a passing gleam of sunshine, while the wreaths of blue smoke, ascending at various distances from amongst the trees, tended to