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.
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