We had seen all that Youghal could offer to the tourist; we were
yearning for Salemina; we wanted to hear Benella talk about 'the
science'; we were eager to inspect the archaeologist, to see if he
'would do' for Salemina instead of the canon, or even the minor
canon, of the English Church, for whom we had always privately
destined her. Accordingly we decided to go by an earlier train, and
give our family a pleasant surprise. It was five o'clock in the
afternoon when our car trundled across St. Patrick's Bridge, past
Father Mathew's statue, and within view of the church and bells of
Shandon, that sound so grand on the pleasant waters of the river
Lee. Away to the west is the two-armed river. Along its banks rise
hills, green and well wooded, with beautiful gardens and verdant
pastures reaching to the very brink of the shining stream.

It was Saturday afternoon, and I never drove through a livelier,
quainter, more easy-going town. The streets were full of people
selling various things and plying various trades, and among them we
saw many a girl pretty enough to recall Thackeray's admiration of
the Corkagian beauties of his day. There was one in particular,
driving a donkey in a straw-coloured governess cart, to whose
graceful charm we succumbed on the instant. There was an exquisite
deluderin' wildness about her, a vivacity, a length of eyelash with
a gleam of Irish grey eye, 'the greyest of all things blue, the
bluest of all things grey,' that might well have inspired the
English poet to write of her as he did of his own Irish wife; for
Spenser, when he was not writing the Faerie Queene, or smoking
Raleigh's fragrant weed, wooed and wedded a fair colleen of County
Cork.

'Tell me, ye merchant daughters, did ye see