“Mammy says it is his teeth.”

“No reason he should set ours on edge.  I’d compose him if I had the chance!  Well, Miss Leigh, if I can’t fetch anything else for this lady, I’ll go on deck, and return presently to report progress and help you back again.”

The storm raged for many hours more, and struck terror into the hearts of the women and children.  Mr. Dutton and some of the other gentlemen were up all night, as well as the captain and officers; but the morning rose calm and delicious over a sleeping sea, and cheerfulness and high spirits reigned in the ship.  They were within a day of land, too—­a more welcome prospect than ever, after the perils and dangers of the night.  The dinner-table had scarcely an absentee, and was far more lively than it had ever been yet.

“One can sleep comfortably to-night, being so near land,” cried the thoughtless Mrs. Butler.

“There have been more shipwrecks off the coast of Ireland than any other,” said Mr. Dutton, sardonically.  He was the only one who did not display unmixed delight at reaching England; and, when other people are exuberantly rejoicing at the very thing that is annoying ourselves, to moderate their transports a little is a satisfaction.

“Oh, how can you be so shocking!  But I don’t believe you.  Once we are in sight of land, if there were any danger, what would prevent us getting into boats and rowing to it?”

And then Mr. Dutton plunged into a ghastly tale of a steamer that had struck on the Irish coast at night, and the passengers had to take to the boats in their bed-clothes.  One poor mother, with a baby tied on her back with a shawl, and another child in her arms, found the shawl empty, the infant having slipped out into the sea; and how they remained beating about for hours before they could land, nearly perished with cold from insufficient clothing.

Everybody seemed provided with similar anecdotes, and yarn succeeded yarn till late in the evening, when a message from the captain that Ireland was in sight brought them all on deck.  The moon was shining softly over the beautiful mountains and valleys of ——.  A more exquisite little picture could hardly have been presented to the eye wearied of perpetual gazing on the pathless ocean.  Exclamations of delight were heard on all sides, while some prosaically remarked it was almost as fine as scenes in “Peep o’ Day” or “The Colleen Bawn.”  To Bluebell it was fairy-land.  To begin with, she had never seen a mountain, and the picturesque in Canada is on too large a scale for the little details that give beauty to scenery.  Her conception of the Emerald Isle, founded on Lover’s ballads and Lever’s romances, was completely realized.

“How haunting!” said she, in a hushed whisper.  “What a pity to go any further, and be disenchanted, perhaps!”

“I wish,” said Mr. Dutton, “you would think you might go further and fare worse in another case,”—­which ambiguous speech, it must be supposed, was not intended to be taken literally; for, though youthful susceptibility and propinquity had given birth to a hasty passion, and he was savage enough at the prospect of parting, to a young man dependent on an uncle and residing chiefly at sea a penniless wife might have its embarrassments.