She said she was only nineteen at the time; but I could read the fly-leaf in the family Bible as well as another (it was one of the three books which, with the backgammon-board, formed my uncle’s library), and know that she was born in the year ’37, and christened by Doctor Swift, Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin:  hence she was three-and-twenty years old at the time she and I were so much together.

When I come to think about her now, I know she never could have been handsome; for her figure was rather of the fattest, and her mouth of the widest; she was freckled over like a partridge’s egg, and her hair was the colour of a certain vegetable which we eat with boiled beef, to use the mildest term.  Often and often would my dear mother make these remarks concerning her; but I did not believe them then, and somehow had gotten to think Honoria an angelical being, far above all the other angels of her sex.

And as we know very well that a lady who is skilled in dancing or singing never can perfect herself without a deal of study in private, and that the song or the minuet which is performed with so much graceful ease in the assembly-room has not been acquired without vast labour and perseverance in private; so it is with the dear creatures who are skilled in coquetting.  Honoria, for instance, was always practising, and she would take poor me to rehearse her accomplishment upon; or the exciseman, when he came his rounds, or the steward, or the poor curate, or the young apothecary’s lad from Brady’s Town:  whom I recollect beating once for that very reason.  If he is alive now I make him my apologies.  Poor fellow! as if it was his fault that he should be a victim to the wiles of one of the greatest coquettes (considering her obscure life and rustic breeding) in the world.

If the truth must be told—­and every word of this narrative of my life is of the most sacred veracity—­my passion for Nora began in a very vulgar and unromantic way.  I did not save her life; on the contrary, I once very nearly killed her, as you shall hear.  I did not behold her by moonlight playing on the guitar, or rescue her from the hands of ruffians, as Alfonso does Lindamira in the novel; but one day, after dinner at Brady’s Town, in summer, going into the garden to pull gooseberries for my dessert, and thinking only of gooseberries, I pledge my honour, I came upon Miss Nora and one of her sisters, with whom she was friends at the time, who were both engaged in the very same amusement.

‘What’s the Latin for gooseberry, Redmond?’ says she.  She was always ‘poking her fun,’ as the Irish phrase it.

‘I know the Latin for goose,’ says I.

‘And what’s that?’ cries Miss Mysie, as pert as a peacock.

‘Bo to you!’ says I (for I had never a want of wit); and so we fell to work at the gooseberry-bush, laughing and talking as happy as might be.  In the course of our diversion Nora managed to scratch her arm, and it bled, and she screamed, and it was mighty round and white, and I tied it up, and I believe was permitted to kiss her hand; and though it was as big and clumsy a hand as ever you saw, yet I thought the favour the most ravishing one that was ever conferred upon me, and went home in a rapture.