“All ye can do with him, Aileen, when he gets into those humours, is – to take it asy.”

“Take it asy, indeed!” repeated the pretty bride, with a toss of her head, and a curl of her lip; “it's asy to say, take it asy. I'm sure if I had thought Mark was so passionate, I'd have married Mike!”

“But Mike was mighty dark,” replied old Aunt Alice, with a mysterious shake of her head.

“Well, so he was: but then I might have had Matthew.”

“Ah! ah!” laughed old Alice; “he was the worst bird of the nest! Look, ye can wind Mark round yer finger, as I wind this worsted thread – if ye'll only take it asy.”

“Oh! I wish – I wish I had known, before, that men were so ill-contrived! I'd have died sooner than have married,” sobbed Aileen; who, to confess the truth, had been so much petted by the neighbours, on account of her beauty, that it would have required a large proportion of love, and a moderate allowance of wisdom, to change the village coquette into a sober wife – I say a large proportion of love: “Wit,” to quote the old adage, “may win a man,” but wit never kept one: unless a woman cultivate the affections, even more than knowledge, she will never secure a husband's heart. It is to this cultivation, indeed, that women owe – and to which, only, they ought to owe – their influence; and the neglect of which inevitably engenders that mutual distrust which can end only in misery.

“Ah, whisht! avourneen!” said Alice, “sure I told ye all along. ‘Mark,’ says I, ‘is all fire and tow – but it's out in a minute; Mike is dark, and deep as the bay of Dublin; and Matthew is all to the bad intirely.’ You've got the best of the three. And ye can manage him just as the south wind, that's blowing now – God bless it! – manages the thistle-down that's floating through the air, if ye'll take it asy.”