But they had not been for many minutes in the enjoyment of Mrs.
O'Dowd's letter, when the door was flung open, and a stout jolly lady,
in a riding-habit, followed by a couple of officers of Ours, entered
the room.
"Sure, I couldn't stop till tay-time. Present me, Garge, my dear
fellow, to your lady. Madam, I'm deloighted to see ye; and to present
to you me husband, Meejor O'Dowd"; and with this, the jolly lady in the
riding-habit grasped Amelia's hand very warmly, and the latter knew at
once that the lady was before her whom her husband had so often laughed
at. "You've often heard of me from that husband of yours," said the
lady, with great vivacity.
"You've often heard of her," echoed her husband, the Major.
Amelia answered, smiling, "that she had."
"And small good he's told you of me," Mrs. O'Dowd replied; adding that
"George was a wicked divvle."
"That I'll go bail for," said the Major, trying to look knowing, at
which George laughed; and Mrs. O'Dowd, with a tap of her whip, told the
Major to be quiet; and then requested to be presented in form to Mrs.
Captain Osborne.
"This, my dear," said George with great gravity, "is my very good,
kind, and excellent friend, Auralia Margaretta, otherwise called Peggy."
"Faith, you're right," interposed the Major.
"Otherwise called Peggy, lady of Major Michael O'Dowd, of our regiment,
and daughter of Fitzjurld Ber'sford de Burgo Malony of Glenmalony,
County Kildare."
"And Muryan Squeer, Doblin," said the lady with calm superiority.
"And Muryan Square, sure enough," the Major whispered.
"'Twas there ye coorted me, Meejor dear," the lady said; and the Major
assented to this as to every other proposition which was made generally
in company.
Major O'Dowd, who had served his sovereign in every quarter of the
world, and had paid for every step in his profession by some more than
equivalent act of daring and gallantry, was the most modest, silent,
sheep-faced and meek of little men, and as obedient to his wife as if
he had been her tay-boy. At the mess-table he sat silently, and drank
a great deal. When full of liquor, he reeled silently home. When he
spoke, it was to agree with everybody on every conceivable point; and
he passed through life in perfect ease and good-humour. The hottest
suns of India never heated his temper; and the Walcheren ague never
shook it. He walked up to a battery with just as much indifference as
to a dinner-table; had dined on horse-flesh and turtle with equal
relish and appetite; and had an old mother, Mrs. O'Dowd of O'Dowdstown
indeed, whom he had never disobeyed but when he ran away and enlisted,
and when he persisted in marrying that odious Peggy Malony.