r-in-law is out of
the house, I'm as happy as I need be."

"What! you and the old lady don't get on well?" said I.

"I can't say we do; it's not in nature, you know," said Dennis, with a
faint grin. "She comes into the house, and turns it topsy-turvy. When
she's here I'm obliged to sleep in the scullery. She's never paid her
daughter's income since the first year, though she brags about her
sacrifices as if she had ruined herself for Jemima; and besides, when
she's here, there's a whole clan of the Molloys, horse, foot, and
dragoons, that are quartered upon us, and eat me out of house and home."

"And is Molloyville such a fine place as the widow described it?" asked
I, laughing, and not a little curious.

"Oh, a mighty fine place entirely!" said Dennis. "There's the oak park
of two hundred acres, the finest land ye ever saw, only they've cut all
the wood down. The garden in the old Molloys' time, they say, was the
finest ever seen in the West of Ireland; but they've taken all the glass
to mend the house windows: and small blame to them either. There's a
clear rent-roll of thirty-five hundred a year, only it's in the hand of
receivers; besides other debts, for which there is no land security."

"Your cousin-in-law, Castlereagh Molloy, won't come into a large
fortune?"

"Oh, he'll do very well," said Dennis. "As long as he can get credit,
he's not the fellow to stint himself. Faith, I was fool enough to put my
name to a bit of paper for him, and as they could not catch him in Mayo,
they laid hold of me at Kingstown here. And there was a pretty to do.
Didn't Mrs. Gam say I was ruining her family, that's all? I paid it by
instalments (for all my money is settled on Jemima); and Castlereagh,
who's an honourable fellow, offered me any satisfaction in life. Anyhow,
he couldn't do more than THAT."

"Of course not: and now you're friends?"

"Yes, and he and his aunt have had a tiff, too; and he abuses her
properly, I warrant ye. He says that she carried about Jemima from place
to place, and flung her at the head of every unmarried man in England
a'most--my poor Jemima, and she all the while dying in love with me!
As soon as she got over the small-pox--she took it at Fermoy--God bless
her, I wish I'd been by to be her nurse-tender--as soon as she was
rid of it, the old lady said to Castlereagh, 'Castlereagh, go to the
bar'cks, and find out in the Army List where the 120th is.' Off she came
to Cork hot foot. It appears t