urse,
her daughter, apostrophised by her mother, "Jemima, my soul's darling?"
or, "Jemima, my blessed child!" or, "Jemima, my own love!" The
sacrifices that Mrs. Gam had made for that daughter were, she said,
astonishing. The money she had spent in masters upon her, the illnesses
through which she had nursed her, the ineffable love the mother bore
her, were only known to Heaven, Mrs. Gam said. They used to come into
the room with their arms round each other's waists: at dinner between
the courses the mother would sit with one hand locked in her daughter's;
and if only two or three young men were present at the time, would be
pretty sure to kiss her Jemima more than once during the time whilst the
bohea was poured out.

As for Miss Gam, if she was not handsome, candour forbids me to say she
was ugly. She was neither one nor t'other. She was a person who wore
ringlets and a band round her forehead; she knew four songs, which
became rather tedious at the end of a couple of months' acquaintance;
she had excessively bare shoulders; she inclined to wear numbers of
cheap ornaments, rings, brooches, ferronnieres, smelling-bottles, and
was always, we thought, very smartly dressed: though old Mrs. Lynx
hinted that her gowns and her mother's were turned over and over again,
and that her eyes were almost put out by darning stockings.

These eyes Miss Gam had very large, though rather red and weak, and used
to roll them about at every eligible unmarried man in the place. But
though the widow subscribed to all the balls, though she hired a fly
to go to the meet of the hounds, though she was constant at church, and
Jemima sang louder than any person there except the clerk, and though,
probably, any person who made her a happy husband would be invited down
to enjoy the three footmen, gardeners, and carriages at Molloyville, yet
no English gentleman was found sufficiently audacious to propose.
Old Lynx used to say that the pair had been at Tunbridge, Harrogate,
Brighton, Ramsgate, Cheltenham, for this eight years past; where they
had met, it seemed, with no better fortune. Indeed, the widow looked
rather high for her blessed child: and as she looked with the contempt
which no small number of Irish people feel upon all persons who get
their bread by labour or commerce; and as she was a person whose
energetic manners, costume, and brogue were not much to the taste of
quiet English country gentlemen, Jemima--sweet, spotless flower--still