The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain. William Carleton

is a nice affair,” he observed, “about the Black Baronet's daughter.”

      “What is a nice affair?” asked our friend Alley, for she it was, as the reader of course is already aware—“What is a nice affair?”

      “Why, that Miss Gourlay, they say, fell in love with a buttonmaker's clerk from London, and is goin' to marry him in spite of all opposition.”

      “Who's your authority for that?” asked Alley; “but whoever is, is a liar, and the truth is not in him—that's what I say.”

      “Ay, but what do you know about it?” asked the grazier. “You're not in Miss Gourlay's saicrets—and a devilish handsome, gentlemanly lookin' fellow they say the button-maker is. Faith, I can tell you, I give tooth-an-egg-credit. The fellow will get a darlin' at all events—and he'll be very bad indeed, if he's not worth a ship-load of that profligate Lord Dunroe.”

      “Well,” replied Alley, “I agree with you there, at all events; for God sees that the same Lord Dunroe will make the cream of a bad husband to whatsoever poor woman will suffer by him. A bad bargain he will be at best, and in that I agree with you.”

      “So far, then,” replied the grazier, “we do agree; an', dang my buttons, but I'll lave it to this gentleman if it wouldn't be betther for Miss Gourlay to marry a daicent button-maker any day, than such a hurler as Dunroe. What do you say, sir?”

      “But who is this button-maker,” asked the stranger, “and where is he to be found?”

      Lucy, on recognizing his voice, could scarcely prevent her emotion from becoming perceptible; but owing to the darkness of the night, and the folds of her thick veil, her fellow-travellers observed nothing.

      “Why,” replied the grazier, who had evidently, from a lapse of memory, substituted one species of manufacture for another thing, “they tell me he is stopping in the head inn in Ballytrain; an', dang my buttons, but he must be a fellow of mettle, for sure didn't he kick that tyrannical ould scoundrel, the Black Baronet, down-stairs, and out of the hall-door, when he came to bullyrag over him about his daughter—the darlin'?”

      Lucy's distress was here incredible; and had not her self-command and firmness of character been indeed unusual, she would have felt it extremely difficult to keep her agitation within due bounds.

      “You labor under a mistake there,” replied the stranger; “I happen to know that nothing of the kind occurred. Some warm words passed between them, but no blows. A young person named Fenton, whom I know, was present.”

      “Why,” observed the grazier, “that's the young fellow that goes mad betimes, an' a quare chap he is, by all accounts. They say he went mad for love.”

      From this it was evident that rumor had, as usual, assigned several causes for Fenton's insanity.

      “Yes, I believe so,” replied the stranger.

      Alley, who thought she had been overlooked in this partial dialogue, determined to sustain her part in the conversation with a dignity becoming her situation, now resolved to flourish in with something like effect.

      “They know nothing about it,” she said, “that calls Miss Gourlay's sweetheart a button-maker. Miss Gourlay's not the stuff to fall in love wid any button-maker, even if he made buttons of goold; an' sure they say that the king an' queen, and the whole royal family wears golden buttons.”

      “I think, in spaiking of buttons,” observed the grazier, with a grin, “that you might lave the queen out.”

      “And why should I lave the queen out?” asked Alley, indignantly, and with a towering resolution to defend the privileges of her sex. “Why ought I lave the queen out, I say?”

      “Why,” replied the grazier, with a still broader grin, “barring she wears the breeches, I don't know what occasion she could have for buttons.”

      “That only shows your ignorance,” said Alley; “don't you know that all ladies wear habit-shirts, and that habit-shirts must have buttons?”

      “I never heard of a shirt havin' buttons anywhere but at the neck,” replied the grazier, who drew the inference in question from his own, which were made upon a very simple and primitive fashion.

      “But you don't know either,” responded Alley, launching nobly into the purest fiction, from an impression that the character of her mistress required it for her defence, “you don't know that nobody is allowed to make buttons for the queen but a knight o' the garther.”

      “Garther!” exclaimed the grazier, with astonishment. “Why what the dickens has garthers to do wid buttons?”

      “More than you think,” replied the redoubtable Alley. “The queen wears buttons to her garthers, and the knight o' the garther is always obliged to try them on; but always, of course, afore company.”

      The stranger was exceedingly amused at this bit of by-play between Alley and the honest grazier, and the more so as it drew the conversation from a point of the subject that was painful to him in the last degree, inasmuch as it directly involved the character of Miss Gourlay.

      “How do you know, then,” proceeded Alley, triumphantly, “but the button-maker that Miss Gourlay has fallen in love with may be a knight o' the garther?”

      “Begad, there maybe a great dale in that, too,” replied the unsuspicious grazier, who never dreamt that Alley's knowledge of court etiquette might possibly be rather limited, and her accounts of it somewhat apocryphal;—“begad, there may. Well,” he added, with an honest and earnest tone of sincerity, “for my part, and from all ever I heard of that darlin' of a beauty, she deserves a knight o' the shire, let alone a knight o' the garther. They say the good she does among the poor and destitute since they came home is un-tellable. God bless her! And that she may live long and die happy is the worst that I or anybody that knows her wishes her. It's well known that she had her goodness from her angel of a mother at all events, for they say that such another woman for charity and kindness to the poor never lived; and by all accounts she led an unhappy and miserable life wid her Turk of a husband, who, they say, broke her heart, and sent her to an early grave.”

      Alley was about to bear fiery and vehement testimony to the truth of all this; but Lucy, whose bosom heaved up strongly two or three times at these affecting allusions to her beloved mother, and who almost sobbed aloud, not merely from sorrow but distress, arising from the whole tenor of the conversation, whispered a few words into her ear, and she was instantly silent. The farmer seemed somewhat startled; for, in truth, as we have said, he was naturally one of those men who wish to hear themselves talk. In this instance, however, he found, after having made three or four colloquial attacks upon the stranger, but without success, that he must only have recourse either to soliloquy or silence. He accordingly commenced to hum over several old Irish airs, to which he ventured to join the words—at first in a very subdued undertone. Whenever the coach stopped, however, to change horses, which it generally did at some public house or inn, the stranger could observe that the grazier always went out, and on his return appeared to be affected with a still stronger relish for melody. By degrees he proceeded from a tolerably distinct undertone to raise his voice into a bolder key, when, at last, throwing aside all reserve, he commenced the song of Cruiskeen Lawn, which he gave in admirable style and spirit, and with a rich mellow voice, that was calculated to render every justice to that fine old air. In this manner, he literally sang his way until within a few miles of the metropolis. He was not, however, without assistance, during, at least, a portion of the journey. Our friend Dandy, who was on the outside, finding that the coach came to a level space on the road, placed the dulcimer on his knees, and commenced an accompaniment on that instrument, which produced an effect equally comic and agreeable. And what added to the humor of this extraordinary duet—if we can call it so—was the delight with which each intimated his satisfaction at the performance of the other, as well as with the terms in which it was expressed.

      “Well done, Dandy! dang my buttons, but you shine upon the wires. Ah, thin, it's you that is and ever was the wiry lad—and