Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/420

 . 5, 1861.] without trying to discover the cause of what seems to me to be incomprehensible.’

‘So you are again as mute as a fish!’ said the sham Aileen. ‘A penny for your thoughts, you overgrown omathaun.’

‘Why, then, Miss Aileen,’ said Phelim, ‘I would like to ask you a civil question, if you will promise to give me a civil answer?’

‘Good manners and you might be married, for you are not in the least degree akin to one another,’ replied the sham Aileen. ‘Sure, if you were not as ignorant as a donkey you ought to know that a pretty girl of eighteen can never be anything but civil to a well-dressed youngster. Ask your question like a man, and I’ll answer you as becomes a lady, who has more money in her pocket than ever belonged to your whole seed, breed, and generation.’

‘Then the question I have to ask you is this,’ said Phelim, becoming very much disgusted with the Danish beauty before him, ‘what in the world is the reason that both your manners and your language are so very different this morning from what they were two days ago?’

‘Oh, oh!’ said the sham Aileen; ‘so, my bright youth, you do not think me as agreeable this morning as the day you first saw me?’

‘By no manner of means,’ gruffly replied Phelim.

‘Tell the truth, and shame the devil, is an old Danish proverb,’ observed the sham Alieen; ‘and as you asked a civil question, I will give you a civil and candid answer. The only reason for a difference between my manners and language upon this and that occasion—if there is any real difference between them—is the slight difference that is caused by a small drop of drink.’

‘A small drop of drink!’ exclaimed Phelim, utterly confounded by this confession. ‘You don’t mean to say that you drink?’

‘Drink! Don’t I, indeed! Does a duck swim?’ answered the sham Aileen.

‘What! drink spirits?’ cried the horrified Phelim.

‘Yes, the real stuff! the only good thing that ever was made in or ever went out of Ireland—genuine Irish whiskey!’

‘Oh! impossible, impossible! you slander yourself, hapless Aileen!’ cried the heart-broken Phelim.

‘Impossible! Ah! then listen to the poor gommilew, how little he knows of the ways of us women!’ said the pretended Aileen. ‘Did you ever know a good sportsman who ventured out in the hunting-field with the dogs, or by the river-side with a rod, and yet was seen in either place without a well-filled pocket-pistol of strong drink? Look here, my bouchal,’ added the sham Aileen, as she drew forth a pint-bottle from her pocket, which appeared to be half-filled with whiskey.

‘Oh! there is no standing this,’ cried Phelim, bounding over the stream. ‘Nothing now but the evidence of my own senses will convince me you are telling the truth to your own dishonour.’

“As Phelim thus spoke, he snatched the bottle from the hand of the witch, uncorked it, smelled the contents, tasted them, and, spitting out the fairy liquid on the earth, he exclaimed:

‘Miserable young woman! your wicked grandmother must have laid some damnable spell upon you this morning; you are bewitched by some of her hellish charms.’

“He could say no more. He had imbibed a particle of the witch’s noxious potion.

‘Ah! as I have got you within arm’s length of me,’ cried the sham Aileen, her fingers now clammy with enchanting ointments, ‘I cannot refrain from embracing you. Kiss me, my bouchal!’

“The old woman’s lips, moistened with a powerful charm, pressed the lips of the young man, and her baleful breath was exhaled upon him.

‘Oh! murder, murder! I am poisoned entirely!’ said Phelim to himself. ‘Oh! this creature must have been feeding for a century upon onions, leeks, garlic, and assafœtida! Oh! this cannot be a young woman at all! Ah!’ exclaimed Phelim, as he perceived the smooth features of Aileen shrivel up into the withered, wrinkled face of Moyra Olliffe. ‘Ah! you accursed hag! I knew well that my darling could never have spoken nor acted in the horrid way that you, when disguised as her, were going on. I will have you burned, you atrocious, mischief-making—’

“Phelim could say no more; the fearful necromantic charm had done its work, and he fell without sense or motion at the feet of the malignant Danish witch.



has remarked that there is the greatest difference in the world between dining and getting your dinner. The world is a large place; suppose we test the saying at some representative spot. What, for instance, is the central point of measurement to us English people? How do we best express our position anywhere on the globe? Are not all distances reckoned from Greenwich? Does not that town, or some magic spot in that parish, provide the true unit of reckoning, and stand for the starting post of wanderings and voyages? Is it not the conventional boss or navel of the world? Thence the navigator counts his degrees. Thence the chronometer derives the “time.” There, also, we may consult the statute yard—inch and foot. There, also, for a month or two, the gourmet finds the ideal dinner. It is the centre of the culinary system. Whatever it may be in the “world,” there is, at Greenwich, the greatest difference between dining and getting your dinner. I am not going to describe that meal at the Ship or Trafalgar. Mr. Quartermaine would not thank me for a stale version of the result of his elaborate and piquant experience. It must be judged by other powers than the eye or the ear. How can I explain, even to myself, the succession of dishes which lead the gratified but buoyant appetite up to the culminating, characteristic focus of a whitebait dinner. Can I—though I had the skill of the subtlest analyst—define the combined operation of wines,