The Great Hoggarty Diamond | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1911 John Murray edition.

THE GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND
CHAPTER I

GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF OUR VILLAGE AND THE FIRST
GLIMPSE OF THE DIAMOND
When I came up to town for my second year, my aunt Hoggarty made
me a present of a diamond-pin; that is to say, it was not a diamond- pin
then, but a large old-fashioned locket, of Dublin manufacture in the
year 1795, which the late Mr. Hoggarty used to sport at the Lord
Lieutenant's balls and elsewhere. He wore it, he said, at the battle of
Vinegar Hill, when his club pigtail saved his head from being taken
off,--but that is neither here nor there.
In the middle of the brooch was Hoggarty in the scarlet uniform of the
corps of Fencibles to which he belonged; around it were thirteen locks
of hair, belonging to a baker's dozen of sisters that the old gentleman
had; and, as all these little ringlets partook of the family hue of brilliant
auburn, Hoggarty's portrait seemed to the fanciful view like a great fat
red round of beef surrounded by thirteen carrots. These were dished up
on a plate of blue enamel, and it was from the GREAT HOGGARTY
DIAMOND (as we called it in the family) that the collection of hairs in
question seemed as it were to spring.
My aunt, I need not say, is rich; and I thought I might be her heir as
well as another. During my month's holiday, she was particularly
pleased with me; made me drink tea with her often (though there was a

certain person in the village with whom on those golden summer
evenings I should have liked to have taken a stroll in the hayfields);
promised every time I drank her bohea to do something handsome for
me when I went back to town,--nay, three or four times had me to
dinner at three, and to whist or cribbage afterwards. I did not care for
the cards; for though we always played seven hours on a stretch, and I
always lost, my losings were never more than nineteenpence a night:
but there was some infernal sour black-currant wine, that the old lady
always produced at dinner, and with the tray at ten o'clock, and which I
dared not refuse; though upon my word and honour it made me very
unwell.
Well, I thought after all this obsequiousness on my part, and my aunt's
repeated promises, that the old lady would at least make me a present
of a score of guineas (of which she had a power in the drawer); and so
convinced was I that some such present was intended for me, that a
young lady by the name of Miss Mary Smith, with whom I had