Their principal employment, according to
her traditions, when they were not breaking
the heads of their foes, the O'Haggertys,
was hunting the wild deer; and, when both
these excitements palled, they were hurling
bars, and running foot-races, or shouting
loud choruses to war-songs over their cups.
No doubt, therefore, perpetual motion was
Miss Honoria M'Murrough's special patrimony;
for which, in these degenerate days,
the embroidery-frame and a succession of
incapables in the shape of what Mrs. Crump,
the landlady of Number Five, called "gurls,"
offered the only legitimate excitants.

These historic evenings did not pass without
a cloud. I frequently hazarded a
disbelief in her stories, that drew down the vials
of her wrath on the unhappy red head which
had originally attracted her favourable notice.
My observations were imbued with what
she termed a six-and-eightpenny spirit, " very
unlike mee poor brother. It was he, sure,
who could tell all the old stories, and sing the
old songs. If you were not such a quare
little fellow, always wanting to know the use
of everything, I would not mind showing ye
some pôtry he wrote about the great Malachi
M'Murrough," a cheerful monarch, I learnt,
who knocked retainers on the head, as readily
as he carried off his enemies' beef. And
then would come a torrent of reminiscences,
pointedly addressed to Mary Lyle, the other
little waif.

In spite, however, of my prosaic disposition,
my handiness in joining, turning, and
carpentering, proved useful in the third-floor
front of Number Five, Hanbury Terrace;
and, being of use to my aunt, found favour
in her eyes. Moreover, she declared that,
though Johnny was a quare little fellow, and
had not the least taste for the pôtry of life,
yet he was kind-hearted, and one whose
word she would trust her life to.

Indeed, in spite of my incredulous questionings,
Aunt Honoria had no truer admirer
than my practical self. I verily believe that
those evenings in her " aportments," as she
loved to term the third-floor in Number Five,
saved my better and more genial spirit from
dying out in the atmosphere of cold-hearted
routine into which I, a lonely little orphan,
was plunged, Moreover, my aunt had a high
and chivalrous notion of what a gentleman
should be, and was anxious that every wearer
of broadcloth, in whose veins a drop of her
blood was supposed to flow, should uphold it.
Although " mee late brother " was avowedly
her beau-ideal of an Irish Gentleman, her
own maxims were calculated to form a very
different model.

When the yellow-stocking period of my
life had merged into the more serious epoch
of clerkship in a solicitor's office, at so much,
or rather so little, per week, Aunt Honoria
continued to rule my destiny. At this time,
and for a couple of years previously, she had
acquired an inmate in Mary Lyle, my
co-listener to the thrilling traditions of the
ancient M'Murroughs.

My aunt was never communicative, and
snapt up all attempts at cross-examination
with silencing abruptness. But I found out
that Mary Lyle's father (an ex-companion of
the ever-deplored and gifted Cornelius, and
"Many and many's the scrape mee poor
brother has been led into by that scamp "), after
many years' oscillation— scrambling all-fours
along the path of life, as Aunt Honoria
expressed it— had at length succumbed to
repeated fits of delirium-tremens. His helpless
daughter, whose career had hitherto been that
of general servant to her father, was left
undisputed possessor of an ancient violoncello
and two bows; the deceased having played on
that instrument at any theatre which would
engage his services. There were also several
manuscript scores of parts, a meerschaum
pipe, and a remarkably long file of
pawnbroker's duplicates. In less than an hour
after the musician's decease, my Aunt
Honoria pounced upon the orphan, and swept
her into Number Five. Some well-to-do
relatives occasionally doled out a pittance
towards her support. I well remember a
day of delightful and absorbing occupation in
dusting, scouring, glueing, and generally
repairing an ottoman-bed which my aunt
had drawn forth from the depths of a second-
hand furniture warehouse in Tottenham
Court Road for the use of her protégée, and
had been a week bargaining about. This
purchase completed the solemn act of
adoption. How my Aunt Honoria managed to
dress that bewitching little figure with the
neat simplicity which was never surprised
out of order, and to secure her the basis of a
sound education, are secrets known only to
the Rewarder of such secrets; and accountable
for, only by the rare combination of
activity, perseverance, and all-enduring hope
which were fused together by the genial
warmth of my aunt's self-denying charity.

The evenings when Messrs. Pluckett and
Maule's office closed early, soon grew to be
delightful hours to me. Our day's work
over— for Mary's services were now valued
and remunerated at the school at which she
had been taught— we listened to the kettle
humming on the reddest and tiniest fire
imaginable. While my aunt set out the tea-
things— a task she never omitted— and I cut
bread and butter, what eager discussions
arose on the novels we admired and the
heroes we adored! Later on a Monday
evening, the "gurl" would make her appearance
with a newspaper (marked here and
there with concentric rings darkly indicative
of porter, and held carefully, a fold of her
apron intervening between it and her fingers)
to deliver the same to my aunt with " Mr.
Corrigan's," or sometimes "the Parlour's,"
compliments, and hopes Miss M'Murrough
is quite well.

To which my aunt would reply suitably;