CHAPTER XXXII.

Mr. O’LEARY’S first love.

“It was during the vice-royalty of the late Duke of Richmond that the incidents I am about to mention took place.  That was a few years since, and I was rather younger, and a little more particular about my dress than at present.”  Here the little man cast an eye of stoical satisfaction upon his uncouth habiliments, that nearly made us forget our compact, and laugh outright.  “Well, in those wild and headstrong days of youthful ardour, I fell in love—­desperately in love—­and as always is, I believe, the case with our early experiments in that unfortunate passion, the object of my affection was in every way unsuited to me.  She was a tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed maiden, with a romantic imagination, and a kind of a half-crazed poetic fervour, that often made me fear for her intellect.  I’m a short, rather fat—­I was always given this way”—­here he patted a waistcoat that would fit Dame Lambert—­“happy-minded little fellow, that liked my supper of oysters at the Pigeon-house, and my other creature-comforts, and hated every thing that excited or put one out of one’s way, just as I would have hated a blister.  Then, the devil would have it—­for as certainly as marriages are made in heaven, flirtations have something to say to the other place—­that I should fall most irretrievably in love with Lady Agnes Moreton.  Bless my soul, it absolutely puts me in a perspiration this hot day, just to think over all I went through on her account; for, strange to say, the more I appeared to prosper in her good graces, the more did she exact on my part; the pursuit was like Jacob’s ladder—­if it did lead to heaven it was certainly an awfully long journey, and very hard on one’s legs.  There was not an amusement she could think of, no matter how unsuited to my tastes or my abilities, that she did not immediately take a violent fancy to; and then there was no escaping, and I was at once obliged to go with the tide, and heaven knows if it would not have carried me to my grave if it were not for the fortunate (I now call it) accident that broke off the affair for ever.  One time she took a fancy for yachting, and all the danglers about her—­and she always had a cordon of them—­young aides-de-camp of her father the general, and idle hussars, in clanking sabertasches and most absurd mustachios—­all approved of the taste, and so kept filling her mind with anecdotes of corsairs and smugglers, that at last nothing would satisfy her till I—­I who always would rather have waited for low water, and waded the Liffey in all its black mud, than cross over in the ferry-boat, for fear of sickness—­I was obliged to put an advertisement in the newspaper for a pleasure-boat, and, before three weeks, saw myself owner of a clinker-built schooner, of forty-eight tons, that by some mockery of fortune was called ‘The Delight.’  I wish you saw me, as you might