"I beg your pardon," he continued, "just one moment more--I wanted to ask, was it not apoplexy, for I heard an odd report about the death?"
"Oh, yes," says Biddy; "apoplexy--good bye!"
Tom cocked his ears, Biddy grew redder, and the widow crammed her handkerchief into her mouth to endeavour to smother her laughter.
"I hope poor Mrs. Flanagan bears it well?" says Tom.
"Poor thing!" says Biddy, "she's inconsolable."
Biddy spoke louder and faster, the widow kicked with laughing, and Tom then suspected whence the sound proceeded.
"She does nothing but cry all day!" says Biddy.
The widow could stand it no longer, and a peal of laughter followed the lamb's bleat.
"What is all this?" said Tom, laying hold of the curtains with relentless hand, and, spite of Biddy's screams, rudely unveiling the sanctuary of sorrowing widowhood. Oh! what a sight for the rising--I beg their pardon, the sinking--generation of old gentlemen who take young wives did Tom behold! There was the widow lying back in the corner--she who was represented as inconsolable and crying all day--shaking with laughter, the tears, not of sorrow, but irrepressible mirth rolling down a cheek rosy enough for a bride.
Biddy, of course, joined the shout. Tom roared in an agony of delight. The very driver's risibility rebelled against the habits of respect, and strengthened the chorus; while the lamb, as if conscious of the authorship of the joke, put in a longer and louder "_Baa--a-a-a!!!_"
Tom, with all his devilment, had good taste enough to feel it was not a scene to linger on; so merely giving a merry nod to each of the ladies, he turned about his horse as fast as he could, and rode away in roars of laughter.
When, in due course of time, the widow again appeared in company, she and Tom Durfy could never meet without smiling at each other. What a pleasant influence lies in mutual smiles! We love the lips which welcome us without words. Such sympathetic influence it was that led the widow and Tom to get better and better acquainted, and like each other more and more, until she thought him the pleasantest fellow in the county, and he thought her the handsomest woman:--besides, she had a good fortune.
The widow, conscious of her charms and her money, did not let Tom, however, lead the quietest life in the world. She liked, with the usual propensity of her sex, occasionally to vex the man she loved, and assert her sway over so good-looking a fellow. He, in his turn, played off the widow very well; and one unfailing source of mirthful reconciliation on Tom's part, whenever the widow was angry, and that he wanted to bring her back to good humour, was to steal behind her chair, and coaxingly putting his head over her fair shoulder, to pat her gently on her peachy cheek, and cry "_Baa!_"