who hated me so, and disliked his father for keeping him out of his
property: while Ulick, the second brother, was his father's own boy;
and, in revenge, Master Mick was desperately afraid of him. I need
not mention the girls' names; I had plague enough with them in
after-life, Heaven knows; and one of them was the cause of all my
early troubles: this was (though to be sure all her sisters denied
it) the belle of the family, Miss Honoria Brady by name.

She said she was only nineteen at the time; but I could read the
fly-leaf in the family Bible as well as another (it was one of the
three books which, with the backgammon-board, formed my uncle's
library), and know that she was born in the year '37, and christened
by Doctor Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: hence she was three-
and-twenty years old at the time she and I were so much together.

When I come to think about her now, I know she never could have been
handsome; for her figure was rather of the fattest, and her mouth of
the widest; she was freckled over like a partridge's egg, and her
hair was the colour of a certain vegetable which we eat with boiled
beef, to use the mildest term. Often and often would my dear mother
make these remarks concerning her; but I did not believe them then,
and somehow had gotten to think Honoria an angelical being, far
above all the other angels of her sex.

And as we know very well that a lady who is skilled in dancing or
singing never can perfect herself without a deal of study in
private, and that the song or the minuet which is performed with so
much graceful ease in the assembly-room has not been acquired
without vast labour and perseverance in private; so it is with the
dear creatures who are skilled in coquetting. Honoria, for instance,