she had been "hand and glove" with a "nob" from her own country--she was
in no way reticent about thus styling her grander acquaintances, only
she wrote the word "knob"--who thought to conceal his nationality by
"awing" and "hawing," she spoke about people being "morried" and wearing
"sockcloth and oshes." If, on the contrary, she had been thrown into the
society of a lady who so far honoured England as to talk as some people
do in England, we had every A turned into E, and every U into O, while
she minced her words as if she had been saying "niminy piminy" since she
first began to talk, and honestly believed no human being could ever
have told she had been born west of St. George's Channel.

But not merely in accent did Miss Blake evidence the fact that her birth
had been the result of an injudicious cross; the more one knew of her,
the more clearly one saw the wrong points she threw out.

Extravagant to a fault, like her Connaught father, she was in no respect
generous, either from impulse or calculation.

Mean about minor details, a turn of character probably inherited from
the Ulster mother, she was utterly destitute of that careful and honest
economy which is an admirable trait in the natives of the north of
Ireland, and which enables them so frequently, after being strictly
just, to be much more than liberal.

Honest, Miss Blake was not--or, for that matter, honourable either. Her
indebtedness to our firm could not be considered other than a matter of
honour, and yet she never dreamt of paying her debt to Mr. Craven.

Indeed, to do Miss Blake strict justice, she never thought of paying the
debts she owed to anyone, unless she was obliged to do so.