"
"You expect, sir!" repeated Miss Hill, with a look of more indignation
than her gentle countenance had ever before been seen to assume.
"Expect!" "If he had said hope," thought she, "it would have been
another thing: but expect! what right has he to expect?"
Now Miss Hill, unfortunately, was not sufficiently acquainted with the
Irish idiom to know that to expect, in Ireland, is the same thing as to
hope in England; and, when her Irish admirer said "I expect," he meant
only, in plain English, "I hope." But thus it is that a poor Irishman,
often, for want of understanding the niceties of the English language,
says the rudest when he means to say the civillest things imaginable.
Miss Hill's feelings were so much hurt by this unlucky "I expect" that
the whole of his speech, which had before made some favourable impression
upon her, now lost its effect: and she replied with proper spirit, as she
thought, "You expect a great deal too much, Mr. O'Neill; and more than
ever I gave you reason to do. It would be neither pleasure nor pride to
me to be won and worn, as you were pleased to say, in spite of them all;
and to be thrown, without a farthing in my pocket, upon the protection of
one who expects so much at first setting out.--So I assure you, sir,
whatever you may expect, I shall not put on the Limerick gloves."
Mr. O'Neill was not without his share of pride and proper spirit; nay, he
had, it must be confessed, in common with some others of his countrymen,
an improper share of pride and spirit.
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