‘What, with me on the pillion?  Would you kill poor me?’ (This young lady was perpetually speaking of ‘poor me!’)

’Well, then, I’ll tell you what I’d do.  I’d jump Daisy into the river, and swim you both across, where no enemy could follow us.’

’Jump twenty feet! you wouldn’t dare to do any such thing on Daisy.  There’s the Captain’s horse, Black George, I’ve heard say that Captain Qui—­’

She never finished the word, for, maddened by the continual recurrence of that odious monosyllable, I shouted to her to ’hold tight by my waist,’ and, giving Daisy the spur, in a minute sprang with Nora over the parapet into the deep water below.  I don’t know why, now—­whether it was I wanted to drown myself and Nora, or to perform an act that even Captain Quin should crane at, or whether I fancied that the enemy actually was in front of us, I can’t tell now; but over I went.  The horse sank over his head, the girl screamed as she sank and screamed as she rose, and I landed her, half fainting, on the shore, where we were soon found by my uncle’s people, who returned on hearing the screams.  I went home, and was ill speedily of a fever, which kept me to my bed for six weeks; and I quitted my couch prodigiously increased in stature, and, at the same time, still more violently in love than I had been even before.  At the commencement of my illness, Miss Nora had been pretty constant in her attendance at my bedside, forgetting, for the sake of me, the quarrel between my mother and her family; which my good mother was likewise pleased, in the most Christian manner, to forget.  And, let me tell you, it was no small mark of goodness in a woman of her haughty disposition, who, as a rule, never forgave anybody, for my sake to give up her hostility to Miss Brady, and to receive her kindly.  For, like a mad boy as I was, it was Nora I was always raving about and asking for; I would only accept medicines from her hand, and would look rudely and sulkily upon the good mother, who loved me better than anything else in the world, and gave up even her favourite habits, and proper and becoming jealousies, to make me happy.

As I got well, I saw that Nora’s visits became daily more rare:  ’Why don’t she come?’ I would say, peevishly, a dozen times in the day; in reply to which query, Mrs. Barry would be obliged to make the best excuses she could find,—­such as that Nora had sprained her ankle, or that they had quarrelled together, or some other answer to soothe me.  And many a time has the good soul left me to go and break her heart in her own room alone, and come back with a smiling face, so that I should know nothing of her mortification.  Nor, indeed, did I take much pains to ascertain it:  nor should I, I fear, have been very much touched even had I discovered it; for the commencement of manhood, I think, is the period of our extremest selfishness.  We get such a desire then to take wing and leave the parent nest, that no tears, entreaties, or feelings