"
"They would--they would. I'm thinkin' this day or two of a plan: but I'm
doubtful whether it 'ud come to anything."
"What is it, acushla? Sure we can't be worse nor we are, any way."
"I'm goin' to go to Dublin. I'm tould that the landlord's come home from
France, and that he's there now; and if I didn't see him, sure I could
see the agent. Now, Kathleen, my intintion 'ud be to lay our case before
the head landlord himself, in hopes he might hould back his hand, and
spare us for a while. If I had a line from the agent, or a scrape of a
pen, that I could show at home to some of the nabors, who knows but I
could borry what 'ud set us up agin! I think many of them 'ud be sorry
to see me turned out; eh, Kathleen?"
The Irish are an imaginative people; indeed, too much so for either
their individual or national happiness. And it is this and superstition,
which also depends much upon imagination, that makes them so easily
influenced by those extravagant dreams that are held out to them by
persons who understand their character.
When Kathleen heard the plan on which Owen founded his expectations of
assistance, her dark melancholy eye flashed with a portion of its former
fire; a transient vivacity lit up her sickly features, and she turned a
smile of hope and affection upon her children, then upon Owen.
"Arrah, thin, who knows, indeed!--who knows but he might do something
for us? And maybe we might be as well as ever yet! May the Lord put it
into his heart, this day! I declare, ay!--maybe it was God put it into
your heart, Owen!"
"I'll set off," replied her husband, who was a man of decision; "I'll
set off on other morrow mornin'; and as nobody knows anything about it,
so let there not be a word said upon the subject, good or bad.
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