the grocer's and the stationer's ladies, to take a walk in the Close;
where she boasted to all her female acquaintance, whom she called her
friends, of her maternal discretion in prevailing upon Mr. Hill to
forbid her daughter Phoebe to wear the Limerick gloves.

In the mean time, Phoebe walked pensively homewards; endeavouring to
discover why her father should take a mortal dislike to a man, at first
sight, merely because he was an Irishman; and why her mother had talked
so much of the great dog, which had been lost last year out of the
tan-yard; and of the hole under the foundation of the cathedral! What
has all this to do with my Limerick gloves? thought she. The more she
thought, the less connexion she could perceive between these things:
for as she had not taken a dislike to Mr. Brian O'Neill at first sight,
because he was an Irishman, she could not think it quite reasonable to
suspect him of making away with her father's dog; nor yet of a design to
blow up Hereford cathedral. As she was pondering upon these matters,
she came within sight of the ruins of a poor woman's house, which a few
months before this time had been burnt down. She recollected that her
first acquaintance with her lover began at the time of this fire; and
she thought that the courage and humanity he showed, in exerting himself
to save this unfortunate woman and her children, justified her notion of
the possibility that an Irishman might be a good man.

The name of the poor woman, whose house had been burnt down, was Smith:
she was a widow, and she now lived at the extremity of a narrow lane in
a wretched habitation. Why Phoebe thought of her with more concern than
usual at this instant we need not examine, but she did; and, reproaching
herself for having neglected it for some weeks past, she resolved to go
directly to see the widow Smith, and to give her a crown which she had
long had in her pocket, with which she had intended to have bought play