fe. Mrs. Davitt looked down for a moment in silence, playing with
the bent joint of her stiff third finger, then she broke out with a
fierceness in curious contrast to her usual gentle speech.

"It's that Tilly Marsden. Bad luck to her for a bowld hussy! She's
put the insult on Leonard."

"The insult?"

"Yea, 'tis the same as an insult for all the neighbors to take notice
of, whin a gurrl ez hez been kapin' company with a man fur goin' on
two years, walks by him now with her nose in the air, lek wan wuz too
good to be shpakin' with the praste himself."

"Don't be too hard on Tilly, Mrs. Davitt," remonstrated Winifred,
soothingly. "Perhaps she is fond of Leonard still, but does not want
him to feel too sure of her. I dare say you were a little like that
yourself, when you were a girl."

"Thrue fer ye, me dear!" Mrs. Davitt answered, with that delightful
Irish readiness to be diverted from her woes to a more cheerful frame
of mind. "Thrue fer ye! I'd never let Michael be sayin' me heart wuz
caught before ever he'd shpread the net."

"Then, depend upon it, Tilly feels the same."

"Mebbe it's the thruth you're afther findin' out; but I misthrust, and
it's meself will never fergive her if she breaks the heart of the best
by in the counthry."

The possibility was too much for the sorrowful mother. She threw her
apron over her head, and abandoned herself once more to despair,
swaying to and fro disconsolately in the black wooden chair from the
back of which the gilt had been half rubbed away by quarter of a
century of rocking.

"Do you think it could possibly do any good for me to talk with
Leonard?" Winifred ventured, quite dubious in her own mind of the
wisdom of the proceeding.

"Ow, if yez would, 'twould like be the savin' o' the by. He'll not
bear any of us to shpake wid him at all at all."

"Very well then, I will try to get him to talk about it. Only don't be
disappointed if I do not succeed! The chances are that he will not
listen to me."

"Not listen to yoursilf, is it!" cried Mrs. Davitt, once more
transported to the heights of hope. "Sure, the saints in Hiven would
lay down their harps to hear your swate vice. Yes, and aven to look at
ye, as ye shtand there, in that white dhress, jist like what wan o'
thimsilves 'ud be wearin'! How becomin' ye are to your clothes!"

Winifred smiled at the subtle flattery; but before she could muster an
appropriate acknowledgment, she caught sight of Leonard loiterin