We pass over in silence the many conjectures that were made by several of the congregation concerning the reason why Miss Phoebe Hill should appear in such a shameful shabby pair of gloves on a Sunday.  After service was ended, the verger went, with great mystery, to examine the hole under the foundation of the cathedral; and Mrs. Hill repaired, with the grocer’s and the stationer’s ladies, to take a walk in the Close, where she boasted to all her female acquaintance, whom she called her friends, of her maternal discretion in prevailing upon Mr. Hill to forbid her daughter Phoebe to wear the Limerick gloves.

In the meantime, Phoebe walked pensively homewards, endeavouring to discover why her father should take a mortal dislike to a man at first sight, merely because he was an Irishman:  and why her mother had talked so much of the great dog which had been lost last year out of the tan-yard; and of the hole under the foundation of the cathedral!  “What has all this to do with my Limerick gloves?” thought she.  The more she thought, the less connection she could perceive between these things:  for as she had not taken a dislike to Mr. Brian O’Neill at first sight, because he was an Irishman, she could not think it quite reasonable to suspect him of making away with her father’s dog, nor yet of a design to blow up Hereford Cathedral.  As she was pondering upon these matters, she came within sight of the ruins of a poor woman’s house, which a few months before this time had been burnt down.  She recollected that her first acquaintance with her lover began at the time of this fire; and she thought that the courage and humanity he showed, in exerting himself to save this unfortunate woman and her children, justified her notion of the possibility that an Irishman might be a good man.

The name of the poor woman whose house had been burnt down was Smith:  she was a widow, and she now lived at the extremity of a narrow lane in a wretched habitation.  Why Phoebe thought of her with more concern than usual at this instant we need not examine, but she did; and, reproaching herself for having neglected it for some weeks past, she resolved to go directly to see the widow Smith, and to give her a crown which she had long had in her pocket, with which she had intended to have bought play tickets.

It happened that the first person she saw in the poor widow’s kitchen was the identical Mr. O’Neill.  “I did not expect to see anybody here but you, Mrs. Smith,” said Phoebe, blushing.

“So much the greater the pleasure of the meeting; to me, I mean, Miss Hill,” said O’Neill, rising, and putting down a little boy, with whom he had been playing.  Phoebe went on talking to the poor woman; and, after slipping the crown into her hand, said she would call again.  O’Neill, surprised at the change in her manner, followed her when she left the house, and said, “It would be a great misfortune to me to have done anything to offend Miss Hill, especially if I could not conceive