as so remarkable when it suited his purpose,
turned to his daughter, and putting his hand into his waistcoat pocket,
pulled out a tress of fair hair, whose shade and silky softness were
exquisitely beautiful.
"Do you see that," said he, "isn't that pretty?"
"Show," she replied, and taking the tress into her hand, she looked at
it.
"It is lovely; but isn't that aquil to it?" she continued, letting loose
her own of raven black and equal gloss and softness--"what can it brag
over that? eh," and as she compared them her black eye flashed, and her
cheek assumed a rich glow of pride and conscious beauty, that made her
look just such a being as an old Grecian statuary would have wished to
model from.
"It is aiquil to hers any day," replied her father, softening into
affection as he contemplated her; "and indeed, Sally, I think you're her
match every way except--except--no matter, troth are you."
"What are you going to do wid it?" she asked; "is it to the Grange it's
goin'?"
"It is an' I want you to help me in what I mentioned to you. If I get
what I'm promised, we'll lave the country, you and I, and as for
that ould vagabond, we'll pitch her to ould Nick. She's talking about
devotion and has nothing but Providence in her lips."
"But isn't there a Providence?" asked his daughter, with a sparkling
eye.
"Devil a much myself knows or cares," he replied, with indifference,
"whether there is or not."
"Bekase if there is," she said, pausing--"if there is, one might as
well--"
She paused again and her fine features assumed an intellectual
meaning--a sorrowful and meditative beauty, that gave a new and more
attractive expression to her face than her father had ever witnessed on
it before.
"Don't vex me, Sarah," he replied, snappishly. "Maybe it's goin' to
imitate her you are. The clargy knows these things maybe--an' maybe they
don't. I only wish she'd come back with the caaharrawan. If all goes
right, I'll pocket what'll bring yourself an' me to America. I'm
beginnin' somehow to get unaisy; an' I don't wish to stay in this
country any longer."
Whilst he spoke, the sparkling and beautiful expression which had lit
up his daughter's countenance passed away, and with it probably the
moment in which it was possible to have opened a new and higher destiny
to her existence.
Nelly, in the meantime, having taken an old spade with her to dig the
roots she went in quest of, turned up Glendhu, and kept searching for
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