LITERATURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5161, 17 November 1884, Page 3

LITERATURE.

♦ THE HEIRESS OF GLENMAHOWLEY. (Temple Bar). "Bob," said I, "this won't do; something must be done." "It must," echoed Bob, as he puffed away from his pipe in a' mouldy little sitting-room in the Shamrock Arms, at Glenmahowley. Glenmahowley attained any importance which it possessed by being the centre of an enormous area of peat cuttings and bog land which stretched away with exasperating monotony to the horizon, unbroken by the slightest irregularity. Iv one place only, along the Monatsimon : id, therewas a single belt of thick w.: Js, whose luxuriance only served to ag£ avate the hopeless waste around them, ihe village itself consisted of a long straggling line of thatched cottages, each with an open door, through which entered bare-legged children, gaunt pigs, cocks and hens, raggedlooking, short-piped mea and slatternly women. Bob Elliott seemed rather to admire the aborigines. No doubt it tickled his vanity to hear admiring exclamations as he went down the street; such r.s " Look at him now ; look at the illigani fnt on him!" or, "Och, then an' isn't he a beautiful gintleinan entoirely ! " Bnt I don't care for these things. Besides, though far more handsome than Bob, n.y beauty is of an intellectual type, and 's lost upon those savages. My nose is pronounced, my complexion pallid, and my head denotes considerable brain power. " There's no harm in the erayter I " was the least offensive of the opinions whi h these idiots expressed of mo. We had been located in this barbart s place about a week. Bob and Iwt i c second cousins, and a distant lnutnal relation whom neither of us had seen had iequeathed us each a small property in tha West. The clearing-up of business zti-a---dant on this, and the necessity of confuting with the old lady's pragmatical conn 4 , ty attorney, had kept us for a week in ti e Shamrock A mis, and promised to keep s for at least another one in that unen via Lie retreat if we could survive the tedratu cf our existence so long. " What can we do '(" groaned Bob r-gain. " Where's Pendleton ? Let's get Pendleton up and take a rise out of him," I suggested, with a flickering attempt r.t vivacity. Pendleton was our fcllo"-----lodger at the inn — a quiet young fellow of artistic proclivities, with a weatness f».r solitary rambles and seclusion. All i-t attempts to pump him had failed as y-;t lo elicit any explanation ot* the ob'^t? r.-„>\ aims which had led him to < i vmnnhowi y. unless it were that it.-; h".ak tlxw- •>• harmonised with his misanthropi: i\rrr, i mind. " no usd/' s-n'u my ftniiparioc, "' ri- *s as dismal as a toml.-tono and as- thy r-- a girl. I never saw such a fellow. I want, il • him to come with me this morning wh.;n

you. were writing your letter and to aid and abet me in a little mild chaff with the two girls at the draper's — you need help against these Irish girls, you know — but he flushed up quite red, and wouldn't hear of snch a thing." " No, he is hardly cut out for a ladykiller," I remarked, adjusting my necktie before the fly-blown mirror and practising a certain expression which I have found extremely effective with the weaker sex — a sort of Lara-like piratical cock of the eye which gives the impression of hidden griefs and a soul which spurns the commonplaces of existence. " Perhaps he will come in, though, and play dummy whist." '• No, he never touches cards." " Milksop ! " I ejaculated. " We'U. send for the landlord, Bob, and ask him if there is nothing we can see or do." This was recognised to be the most rational proceeding under the circumstances, and a messenger was despatched in hot haste to summon Dennis O'Keefe, our worthy host. Let me remark, while he i 3 shuffling upstairs in his slipshod carpet slippers, that I am the mortal known as John Vereker, barrister-at law, popularly supposed to be a rising man, though the exact distance that I have risen during the four years that I have been in practice _ not calculated to turn my brain. Several nice little actions have, however, during that time been taken against me in county courts and otherwise, so that I have put the machinery of the law into motion, though my personal profit in the matter must be acknowledged to have been somewhat remote. O'Keefe was a fine specimen of the aboriginal Ce?t— freckle-faced and roughhaired, with shrewd grey eyes and a deep rich Milesian voice. "Good-morrow to ye, gintlemen," he began as he entered, his large flat feet and uncouth gait giving him a sort of plantigrade appearance. " What would your honours be af ther today?" " The very thing we wanted to ask you, O'Keefe," aaid Bob. " What in the world are we to do? Can't you suggest anything?" " There's the church," remarked OJKeefe, scratching his red hair in perplexity. "'Tis a foine building. There was a gintleman came here the year before last just for to look at it. Maybe your honors — " Hang the church !" roared Bob, with as much vehemence as a Radical advocate for Disestablishment ; "we were there five times last week — in fact, every day except Sunday. Try again, old Pict and Scot." Ourhost, who was serenely indifferent to the many unintelligible epithets applied to hi— by Bob's exuberant fancy, pondered once more over the problem. " There's the hole in the bog," he suggested with diffidence. " The same where the boys threw Mr Lyons, of Glenmorris — bad scran to him ! — after they shot him. Maybe you'd loike to see where they found him wid his head in the mud an' his feet stickin* up. Ah, it was a glad soight, Sorrs, for the pisantry that had worked and slaved — the craturs — and then for him to ! step in wid a .dirty foive and twinty per cent reduction in the rint and serve notices on them as wouldn't pay. Sure you could takfe your food — or a gossoon could carry it — and picnic by the hole." " The prospect is alluring," I remarked " but there seems to me to be too much chance of the inoffensive tillers of the soil taking a fancy to plant a couple more Saxons upside down in the bog-hole. I negative that suggestion." " What are those trees to the eastward?" asked Bob. " Surely there is something to be seen down there." " It's proivate. If s the Clairmont family's ground, an' you'd be shot as loike as not if you so much as put your nose over the walL" " Pleasant land this, Jack ! " remarked my companion ruefully. " I almost wish old. & Quibble would unearth a codicil leaving the place to somebody else." "Ah, sure you can't judge of the counthry now while it's quoiet," said our host. " Wait till the throubles come round agin — next year maybe, or the year af ther. H?s a loively land when the bhoys is out a taste of scenery would you think about j and bein' landlords yourselves by that toime, you'd see the cream of the diversion." " How about these Clairmonts ? " I asked at a venture. "Do they live upon their own land?" "Begorra — you've got it there! "cried O'Keefe. "They do nothing but live on their own land. They've niver stirred off it for more'n 15 years." " Never stirred off it ! " " Sorra a fut beyond the park gates and the great brick wall. No man's oi has ever rested upon Miss Clairmont's face bar ould Dennis the lodgekeeper — the blackmouthed spalpeen — more be token they say she's grown into the purtiest girl in the county, f orbye having foive and twinty thousand in her own right." " What !" we both roared. "Foive and twinty thousand pound," repeated O'Keefe solemnly; "and when her ould cat of a mother dies she'll come in for the whole family estate." "What is she?" "Where is she?" "Whoisßhe?" "What the devil is the matter with her?" shouted Bob and I, forming a sort of strophe and antistrophe . to the landlord's chorus. (To be continued.)