KATE (_very promptly_). You, Miss.

MARY. Then do what I tell you. Put on the tablecloth, and lay the cups
and saucers, and make everything ready, and take no orders except from
me.

SARAH. Very well. I'll learn her manners when I come to this house.
(_To_ MARY) I want to see the china.

MARY. Well, go into the next room and look for it.

SARAH (_going towards door to rooms_). You better mind what your
father told you. (_She goes in._)

MARY (_making a face after her_). You nasty old thing. (DANIEL
_appears at the door from yard. He is nervous and worried looking. He
goes and sits down near the fireplace, wearily._) Uncle Dan. (_She
goes over close beside him._) Wasn't it good of Alick? He went away to
Ballyannis Post Office to get that telegram sent.

DANIEL. A very decent fellow, Alick. (_Gratefully._) Very obliging.

MARY (_confidingly_). Do you know, uncle, when he went off to send
that telegram I was nearly calling him back. I don't care so very much
now whether I see that boy you were telling me about or not. Is he--do
you think, uncle--is he much nicer than Alick?

DANIEL. Nicer? (_He looks at his niece, and then begins to divine the
way her feelings lie._) Well, of course we have all our opinions on
these things you know, Mary, but Alick--well, after all there's many a
worse fellow than Alick, isn't there? (MARY _does not answer, but puts
her head close to her uncle._) Ah, yes.

MARY (_suddenly_). Uncle! Do you know what has happened? I heard
father proposing to Miss McMinn!

DANIEL (_groaning_). Oh my! I knew it would happen! I knew it would
happen! When? Where?

MARY. In here. I wanted to slip in quietly after leaving Alick down
the loaning when I overheard the voices. It was father and Miss
McMinn. She was telling him how she had saved five pounds on butter
last half year, and ten pounds on eggs this year, and then father
asked her to marry him. I knocked at the door out of divilment, and
she just pitched herself at him. I--I'm not going to stay in the house
with that woman. I'd sooner marry Alick McCready.

DANIEL (_despairingly_). I would myself. I daren't--I couldn't face
the look of that woman in the mornings.

MARY. It's all right for you to talk, uncle. You'll be working away at
your inventions, and that sort of thing, and will have nothing much to
do with her, but I'd be under her thumb all the time. And I hate her,
and I know she hates me. (_Tearfully._) And then the way father talks