The Uninhabited House | Page 3

with the Uninhabited House, and she has altered in
consequence--one of the most original people who ever crossed my
path.
Born in the north of Ireland, the child of a Scottish-Ulster mother and a
Connaught father, she had ingeniously contrived to combine in her own
person the vices of two distinct races, and exclude the virtues of both.
Her accent was the most fearful which could be imagined. She had the
brogue of the West grafted on the accent of the North. And yet there
was a variety about her even in this respect. One never could tell, from
visit to visit, whether she proposed to pronounce "written" as "wrutten"
or "wretten";[Footnote: The wife of a celebrated Indian officer stated

that she once, in the north of Ireland, heard Job's utterance thus
rendered--"Oh! that my words were wr_u_tten, that they were
pr_e_nted in a b_u_ke."] whether she would elect to style her parents,
to whom she made frequent reference, her "pawpaw and mawmaw," or
her "pepai and memai."
It all depended with whom Miss Blake had lately been most intimate. If
she had been "hand and glove" with a "nob" from her own country--she
was in no way reticent about thus styling her grander acquaintances,
only she wrote the word "knob"--who thought to conceal his nationality
by "awing" and "hawing," she spoke about people being "morried" and
wearing "sockcloth and oshes." If, on the contrary, she had been thrown
into the society of a lady who so far honoured England as to talk as
some people do in England, we had every A turned into E, and every U
into O, while she minced her words as if she had been saying "niminy
piminy" since she first began to talk, and honestly believed no human
being could ever have told she had been born west of St. George's
Channel.
But not merely in accent did Miss Blake evidence the fact that her birth
had been the result of an injudicious cross; the more one knew of her,
the more clearly one saw the wrong points she threw out.
Extravagant to a fault, like her Connaught father, she was in no respect
generous, either from impulse or calculation.
Mean about minor details, a turn of character probably inherited from
the Ulster mother, she was utterly destitute of that careful and honest
economy which is an admirable trait in the natives of the north of
Ireland, and which enables them so frequently, after being strictly just,
to be much more than liberal.
Honest, Miss Blake was not--or, for that matter, honourable either. Her
indebtedness to our firm could not be considered other than a matter of
honour, and yet she never dreamt of paying her debt to Mr. Craven.
Indeed, to do Miss Blake strict justice, she never thought of paying the
debts she owed to anyone, unless she was obliged to do so.
Nowadays, I fear it would fare hard with her were she to try her old
tactics with the British tradesman; but, in the time of which I am
writing, co-operative societies were not, and then the British tradesman
had no objection, I fancy, to be gulled.
Perhaps, like the lawyer and the unprofitable client, he set-off being

gulled on one side his ledger against being fleeced on the other.
Be this as it may, we were always compounding some liability for Miss
Blake, as well as letting her house and fighting with the tenants.
At first, as I have said, we found Miss Blake an awful bore, but we
generally ended by deciding we could better spare a better man. Indeed,
the months when she did not come to our office seemed to want
flavour.
Of gratitude--popularly supposed to be essentially characteristic of the
Irish--Miss Blake was utterly destitute. I never did know--I have never
known since, so ungrateful a woman.
Not merely did she take everything Mr. Craven did for her as a right,
but she absolutely turned the tables, and brought him in her debtor.
Once, only once, that I can remember, he ventured to ask when it
would be convenient for her to repay some of the money he had from
time to time advanced.
Miss Blake was taken by surprise, but she rose equal to the occasion.
"You are joking, Mr. Craven," she said. "You mean, when will I want
to ask you to give me a share of the profits you have made out of the
estate of my poor sister's husband. Why, that house has been as good as
an annuity to you. For six long years it has stood empty, or next to
empty, and never been out of law all the time."
"But, you know, Miss Blake, that not a shilling of profit has accrued to
me from the house being in