t more patience, Hughie, than I ever thought was in
him."

"I like him better t'other way," said Hughie. "Things is livelier.
I'd sooner be diggin' dots than dronin' along so poky."

"It's my opinion," put in Hannah tartly, "that last summer just about
spoiled your taste for anything but the life of a pirate. If you must
have somebody throwin' a bottle at your head or dumpin' ministers into
the river or diggin' treasure, things have come to a pretty pass."

Hughie whistled.

"I ain't the only one that's restless," he defended. "Don's as
contraptious as a mule. And I've caught a look in young O'Neill's eye
once or twice like old Sim's black mare, mettlesome and anxious to
bolt."

"Until Joan slips into a chair with a book or some work," snapped
Hannah. "Then he's a lamb. If I was Mr. O'Neill I'd thrash Don into
common sense and I'd remind t'other young man, son or no son, that the
nurse ain't earnin' her keep. Joan's earnin' it for her."

Alone, Kenny owned, one can not be gay and lunch in glens where the wee
folk hide and whisper. And Joan and he himself had chains. He
accepted the summer with a wry grimace, reading in its irksome demands
a chance for real requital. He found no bitterness in the cup he had
set himself to drink. It was the price of Brian's welfare and Brian's
peace of mind. But he hungered for Joan and the long, gay days of
another summer. When had she grown up so, he wondered impatiently. He
missed the romping child with the sun shadows in her hair; he missed
her eager tears and laughter. To his skillful touch they had been but
strings of a beautiful harp, subtly, unfailingly responsive. Ah! she
had been a beautiful promise--that starved child of a summer ago--but
the promise fulfilled in the woman, he owned with a rush of feeling, he
loved more. Her essential tenderness, strumming kindred chords in his
sensitive Celtic soul, aroused an unfamiliar sense of the holiness of
love.

And he was splendidly afire with dreams.

In July the little doctor found his patient strong enough for crutches
and dismissed the nurse. And unexpectedly John Whitaker arrived,
growling his opinion of the rural trains.

"Can you walk without your crutches?" he barked, his glasses oddly
moist.

"A little," said Brian.

Whitaker sat down and blinked.

"You don't deserve a job," he grumbled, "turning me down for a dynamite
spree, but I'm going to send you to Ireland in the fall. There's a
story