Molly told us last night when we were
going to bed, that she had something to relate to us which would surprise us,
and so, indeed, it has, here it is:—Whilst we were dining next door,
Molly, as usual, looking out of the windows, a young
gentleman passed and repassed under the walls of St. Andrew’s Church,
whom she at first took for one of the Irish Brigade officers whom we knew at
Kilkenny last year, for he was dressed in uniform, blue and crimson; but at
last he
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Molly ran down stairs. You know how fond she always was of him, and asked him into the drawing-room. She hopes you will not be angry. He told her all his adventures “since you threw him off,” those were his words; “you his best and only true friend,” and he had never heard or seen anything of us since he went to school, until he saw a little book of poems by a young lady between twelve and fourteen, with my name to them; he then went to the printer’s, and found out where we live only the night before, and he begged so hard to see us before he left Ireland,—for he is going off to Cork to join his regiment on Tuesday,—that he persuaded Molly to let him come today. He said he thought he could clear up a great deal of what you had been made to consider to his disadvantage.
Well, dear papa, Dermody has been! He came according to Molly’s permission this morning. He was quite surprised at the change that had taken place in us and was most gallant about it. He has, I think, been most hardly used.
You know how ill Dr. and Mrs. Austen
behaved, on the plea of old Aichbone, when he lodged in
Grafton Street, showing a little bit of fun he wrote about Mrs.
Austen; and how Dr.
Austen returned all his subscriptions, and how he was obliged to
write for
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The next day his sergeant came to him and said Lord Moira wished to see him. He went to his hotel and was received rather coldly, but without further reproof Lord Moira said, he did not wish to see one who had sat at his mother’s table in the lowly condition to which his follies had reduced him; and, therefore he had used his influence to get him an ensigncy in the commissariat; that he would have his release on the following day and have an appropriate uniform for his new condition, when he must go immediately to join his corps in Dublin on its way to Cork, whence they were to sail for Flanders. He was, poor fellow, to sail on the following night.
Well, papa, never was anything so altered! He is a very handsome young man, and has lost all his shyness. He said he had been looking us out every where, ever since he arrived, and had been at the Theatre Royal for you, but could get no information. Seeing a little book by a young lady “between twelve and fourteen,” at a little shop in Werburgh Street, inscribed with my name, he entered and got our address, and here he was that very evening! His gallantry was beyond anything in talking of the improvement we had made since we were at Madame Terson’s school, and above all, his astonishment at my poetical productions.
The next morning I received a note by the penny post,
with a poem which I should be ashamed to show you, dear papa, it is so very
flattering, if it were not to prove that he has lost nothing of his art of
poetry.
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