to awake, if the mill stops. I trust I have said enough, to move the
reader's pity and compassion for my situation--one more miserable it is
difficult to conceive. It may be though that much might be done by
management, and that a slight exercise of the favourite Whig plan of
concilliation, might avail. Nothing of the kind. She was proof against
all such arts; and what was still worse, there was no subject, no
possible circumstance, no matter, past, present, or to come, that she
could not wind by her diabolical ingenuity, into some cause of offence;
and then came the quick transition to instant punishment. Thus, my
apparently harmless inquiry as to the society of the neighbourhood,
suggested to her--a wish on my part to make acquaintance--therefore to
dine out--therefore not to dine at home--consequently to escape paying
half-a-crown and devouring a chicken--therefore to defraud her, and
behave, as she would herself observe, "like a beggarly scullion, with his
four shillings a day, setting up for a gentleman," &c.

By a quiet and Job-like endurance of all manner of taunting suspicions,
and unmerited sarcasms, to which I daily became more reconciled, I
absolutely rose into something like favour; and before the first month of
my banishment expired, had got the length of an invitation to tea, in her
own snuggery--an honour never known to be bestowed on any before, with
the exception of Father Malachi Brennan, her ghostly adviser; and even
he, it is said, never ventured on such an approximation to intimacy,
until he was, in Kilrush phrase, "half screwed," thereby meaning more
than half tipsy. From time to time thus, I learned from my hostess such
particulars of the country and its inhabitants as I was desirous of
hearing; and among other matters, she gave me an account of the great
landed proprietor himself, Lord Callonby, who was daily expected at his
seat, within some miles of Kilrush, at the same time assuring me that I
need not be looking so "pleased and curling out my whiskers;" "that