uld
have it--for as certainly as marriages are made in heaven, flirtations
have something to say to the other place--that I should fall most
irretrievably in love with Lady Agnes Moreton. Bless my soul, it
absolutely puts me in a perspiration this hot day, just to think over all
I went through on her account; for, strange to say, the more I appeared
to prosper in her good graces, the more did she exact on my part; the
pursuit was like Jacob's ladder--if it did lead to heaven it was
certainly an awfully long journey, and very hard on one's legs. There
was not an amusement she could think of, no matter how unsuited to my
tastes or my abilities, that she did not immediately take a violent fancy
to; and then there was no escaping, and I was at once obliged to go with
the tide, and heaven knows if it would not have carried me to my grave if
it were not for the fortunate (I now call it) accident that broke off the
affair for ever. One time she took a fancy for yachting, and all the
danglers about her--and she always had a cordon of them--young
aides-de-camp of her father the general, and idle hussars, in clanking
sabertasches and most absurd mustachios--all approved of the taste, and
so kept filling her mind with anecdotes of corsairs and smugglers, that
at last nothing would satisfy her till I--I who always would rather have
waited for low water, and waded the Liffey in all its black mud, than
cross over in the ferry-boat, for fear of sickness--I was obliged to put
an advertisement in the newspaper for a pleasure-boat, and, before three
weeks, saw myself owner of a clinker-built schooner, of forty-eight tons,
that by some mockery of fortune was called 'The Delight.' I wish you saw
me, as you might have done every morning for about a month, as I stood on
the Custom-house quay, giving orders for the outfit of the little craft.
At first, as she bobbed and pitched with the flood-tide, I used to be a
little giddy and rather qualmish, but at last I learned to look on
without my head reeling. I began to fancy myself very much of a sailor,
a delusion considerably encouraged by a huge P. jacket and a sou'-wester,
both of which, though it was in the dog-days, Agnes insisted upon my
wearing, saying I looked more like Dirk Hatteraick, who, I understood,
was one of her favourite heroes in Walter Scott. In fact, after she
suggested this, she and all her friends called me nothing but Dirk.

"Well, at last, after heaven knows how many