Page:Shirley (1849 Volume 1).djvu/18

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
6
SHIRLEY.

whole lump of college lads; they know what belangs good manners, and is kind to high and low.”

“More bread!” cries Mr. Malone, in a tone which, though prolonged but to utter two syllables, proclaims him at once a native of the land of shamrocks and potatoes. Mrs. Gale hates Mr. Malone more than either of the other two, but she fears him also, for he is a tall, strongly-built personage, with real Irish legs and arms, and a face as genuinely national; not the Milesian face—not Daniel O’Connel’s style, but the high-featured, North-American-Indian sort of visage, which belongs to a certain class of the Irish gentry, and has a petrified and proud look, better suited to the owner of an estate of slaves, than to the landlord of a free peasantry. Mr. Malone’s father termed himself a gentleman: he was poor and in debt, and besottedly arrogant; and his son was like him.

Mrs. Gale offered the loaf.

“Cut it, woman,” said her guest; and the “woman” cut it accordingly. Had she followed her inclinations, she would have cut the parson also; her Yorkshire soul revolted absolutely from his manner of command.

The curates had good appetites, and though the beef was “tough,” they ate a great deal of it. They swallowed, too, a tolerable allowance of the “flat beer,” while a dish of Yorkshire pudding, and two tureens of vegetables, disappeared like leaves before locusts. The cheese, too, received distinguished