here was in a minute's
time! 'Oh, Shane Fadh--Shane Fadh, acushla machree!' says my poor mother
in Irish, 'you're going to break up the ring about your father's hearth
and mine--going to lave us, avourneen, for ever, and we to hear your
light foot and sweet voice, morning, noon, and night, no more! Oh!' says
she, 'it's you that was the good son all out; and the good brother, too:
kind and cheerful was your voice, and full of love and affection was
your heart! Shane, avourneen dheelish, if ever I was harsh to you,
forgive your poor mother, that will never see you more on her flure as
one of her own family.'

"Even my father, that wasn't much given to crying', couldn't speak, but
went over to a corner and cried till the neighbors stopped him. As for
my brothers and sisters, they were all in an uproar; and I myself cried
like a Trojan, merely bekase I see them at it. My father and mother both
kissed me, and gave me their blessing; and my brothers and sisters did
the same, while you'd think all their hearts would break. 'Come, come,'
says my uncle, 'I'll have none of this: what a hubbub you make, and your
son going to be well married--going to be joined to a girl that your
betters would be proud to get into connection with. You should have more
sense, Rose Campbell--you ought to thank God that he had the luck to
come acrass such a colleen for a wife; and that it's not going to his
grave, instead of into the arms of a purty girl--and what's better, a
good girl. So quit your blubbering, Rose; and you, Jack,' says he to my
father, 'that ought to have more sense, stop this instant. Clear off,
every one of you, out of this, and let the young boy go to his horse.
Clear out, I say, or by the powers I'll--look at them three stags of
huzzies; by the hand of my body they're blubbering bekase it's not their
own story this blessed day. Move--bounce!--and you, Rose Oge, if you're
not behind Dudley Pulton in less than no time, by the hole of my coat,
I'll marry a wife myself, and then where will the twenty guineas be that
I'm to lave you?'

"God rest his soul, and yet there was a tear in his eye all the
while--even in spite of his joking!

"Any how, it's easy knowing that there wasn't sorrow at the bottom of
their grief: for they were all now laughing at my uncle's jokes, even
while their eyes were red with the tears: my mother herself couldn't but
be in a good humor, and join her smile with the rest.

"My uncle now drove us all out