"Mammy loves him dearly for being so good-natured,"
continued the child; "and he has been good to other people as well as to
us."
"To whom?" said Phoebe.
"To a poor man who has lodged for these few days past next door to us,"
replied the child; "I don't know his name rightly, but he is an Irishman,
and he goes out a-haymaking in the daytime along with a number of others.
He knew Mr. O'Neill in his own country, and he told mammy a great deal
about his goodness."
As the child finished these words, Phoebe took out of a drawer some
clothes, which she had made for the poor woman's children, and gave them
to the little girl. It happened that the Limerick gloves had been thrown
into this drawer; and Phoebe's favourable sentiments of the giver of
those gloves were revived by what she had just heard, and by the
confession Mrs. Hill had made, that she had no reasons, and but vague
suspicious, for thinking ill of him. She laid the gloves perfectly
smooth, and strewed over them, whilst the little girl went on talking of
Mr. O'Neill, the leaves of a rose which she had worn on Sunday.
Mr. Hill was all this time in deep conference with those prudent men of
Hereford who were of his own opinion, about the perilous hole under the
cathedral. The ominous circumstance of this ball was also considered,
the great expense at which the Irish glover lived, and his giving away
gloves, which was a sure sign he was not under any necessity to sell
them, and consequently a proof that, though he pretended to be a glover,
he was something wrong in disguise.
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