Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/419

 412 low, rascally, diabolical and infernally wicked animals that ever was formed, there never yet was anything so inhuman, so unfeeling, so mean, so nasty, so low, so rascally and so diabolical as a witch! I am sure you will agree in so thinking with me when I tell you of the plan which old Moyra Olliffe adopted for misleading, bewildering, and misguiding poor young Phelim O’Neal O’Donnell when he came, true to the appointment between them, to meet as he thought his darling little true love, the princess Aileen, on the bank of the Blackwater stream.

“Little did the unhappy young man know that the person he saw fishing for trout was, not his own Aileen (who was then sleeping in her own bed in that white house upon the hill before you) but her abominable old ugly, toothless, withered and wicked grandmother, who had assumed the outward form of Aileen.

“Phelim O’Neal O’Donnell was not a little astonished as he rode up to the place where the supposed Aileen was fishing to see that the moment she took a trout out of the stream she bit its head off between her snow-white teeth, and then threw the headless fish into the basket beside her.

‘Well,’ said Phelim to himself, ‘of all the inhuman sport I ever saw in my born days that is the ugliest and the dirtiest way of putting a fish out of pain that ever I witnessed. Ah! but the poor young creature knows no better. It was her cruel old grandmother, I suppose, that taught her that nasty trick. Wait a while—and so soon as she is married to me, I will be after instructing her in what is the height of good manners when one undertakes to be an angler.’

‘The top of the morning to you, my bouchal,’ cried the sham Aileen, as she saw Phelim O’Neal O’Donnell reining in his horse, and on the point of dismounting. ‘I hope you’re brave and hearty, and as full of fun and friskiness as Mooney’s goose.’

‘The Lord preserve us,’ said Phelim to himself; ‘but those are strange words to be in the mouth of a princess. Upon my veracity, the first thing I shall have to do after making a wife of Aileen is to send her to school to learn how to behave herself.’

‘Why don’t you talk, you big overgrown bosthoon?’ said the sham Aileen. ‘Why, you are as silent as a stuck pig, and are just looking at me this minute as if I had two heads on me.’

‘And no wonder for me,’ thought Phelim to himself. ‘Oh! murder! murder! but this beautiful young creature does not at all improve upon acquaintance.’

‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked the sham Aileen; ‘why don’t you speak out like a man? Have you lost the use of your tongue? I thought that what brought you here this morning in such a hurry, was to make love to me. Ah! if you were one of the decent Danes, instead of being what you are, a low, mean, nasty, dirty O’Donnell, that is not the way in which you would be conducting yourself.’

‘Phew! it is worse and worse she is getting every instant,’ thought Phelim to himself. ‘Ah! that I may never kill a giant, but if she was fifty times as rich as she was bragging the other morning, I wouldn’t submit to her abusing the O’Donnells. I say, Miss Aileen Olliffe,’ continued Phelim, as he took off his yellow velvet cap with the black plumes. ‘Before this love affair between me and you goes any further I would like to have a word of explanation with you.’

‘You would like to have an explanation,’ repeated the Sham Aileen.

‘Yes, I would,’ replied Phelim.

‘Very well, then, my bouchal, you shan’t have it.’

‘And why not?’

‘Because it was a favourite saying with my grand-uncle Olaf-ironfist, who killed forty-five men in forty-five duels, that explanations always made matters worse; and instead of peace always led to new and worse quarrels,’ answered the sham Aileen.

‘And the reason you have for not coming to an explanation is, because you would not like to quarrel with me,’ said Phelim.

‘Exactly so,’ replied the sham Aileen, casting her line into the stream.

‘Very good,’ thought Phelim to himself, ‘she is at last returning to reason. That is the only sensible word that has come from her pretty lips this morning.’

‘And do you know,’ continued the sham Aileen, ‘why I would not like to quarrel with you?’

‘No, I do not; but I should like to hear it,’ replied Phelim, feeling that he was again beginning to be very fond of her.

‘Why, then,’ replied the sham Aileen, ‘the only reason that I would not like to quarrel with you is, that I want to get married.’

‘You want to get married?’ exclaimed the astounded Phelim.

‘By Dad, I do,’ answered the sham Aileen; ‘I am dying to be married, and I don’t much care to whom—so that my husband is a tall, stout, slaughtering young man, six feet two in height, and able to box his corner. All is fish that comes to my net. If I cannot get a trout, why then I am content to be biting the head off a gudgeon’—(and as she said this, she unhooked a poor little gudgeon, crunched its head between her teeth, and cast it into the basket by her side). ‘If I have not the good luck to meet with a rollicking, roystering, skull-splitting Dane, like my brave old grand-uncle Olaf of the Iron-fist, why then I must content myself with one of the low skulking Irish; and as I cannot meet with any other, why I am ready to give my hand and fortune to one of the low, mean, mongrel, dirty O’Donnells.’

‘The O’Donnells ought to feel very much obliged to you for the fine compliments you pay them,’ said Phelim, in a state of great indignation.

‘It is they that ought,’ said the sham Aileen. ‘It is little one of such a low-born crew could ever have supposed that the honour would befall him of being married to the kitchen-maid of a Danish king, much less to a Danish king’s granddaughter.’

‘Oh! this poor, beautiful, young creature must be as mad as a March hare,’ thought Phelim to himself. “But‘But [sic] I will not leave her in this way,