ther?" asked Janie.

"Yes; he's the nearest in age to me, and we're great chums. We have the
wildest fun during the holidays--we dare each other to do the maddest
things we can think of!"

"What kind of things?"

"Well, one day, when old Biddy Macarthy was ill with quinsy, we got up
early and took her cart to Ballycroghan market, and Dermot sold all her
chickens for her. He talked away like a Cheap Jack, and made such fun,
people nearly died with laughing. You see, most of them knew who he
was, and it seemed so absurd to hear him proclaiming the virtues of
Biddy's fowls. Then we filled the cart with seed potatoes, as a present
for her; and tore home so fast that the traces broke, and the donkey
ran straight out of the shafts. We fell on the road, nearly buried in
potatoes, but luckily we weren't hurt. We managed to catch the donkey,
and to mend the traces with a piece of string; then we had to put all
the potatoes back. Biddy laughed so much when we told her about the
adventure that it cured her quinsy; and she said she never had such a
splendid crop of potatoes as from those we brought her that day from
Ballycroghan. That was Dermot's joke; but I think mine was quite as
much fun."

"What was yours?"

"I saved up my pocket-money to get a little pig, to give to old Micky,
the cobbler. Dermot and I walked over to Ennisfellen fair to buy it,
and drove it home with a string tied to its leg. As fast as we pulled
one way it ran another, and just as we got to Micky's cabin the string
snapped, and off the pig bolted down the village, and ran straight into
the open door of the school. The children chased it round and round
beneath the forms, and caught it at last under the master's desk. Oh,
we have lively times at Kilmore! Then once Dermot and I ran away, and
went to see Cousin Theresa at Slieve Donnell. Nobody knew where we were
for two days, and people were hunting all over the country for us. They
thought we must have been drowned, or have fallen into the bog."

"But weren't your father and mother fearfully anxious?" asked Janie,
who had listened almost aghast to the recital of those wild escapades.

"Well, Father was rather cross about that, certainly. He was never
really very angry, though, until the last time, when I----"

But here Honor stopped. On the whole, she decided she would not relate
the story of Firefly. She could not quite understand the expression on
Janie's face, and she began to doubt whether her fr