body at the Joyces'. Then he said to Mrs. Joyce: "And how's
Theresa, ma'am?"

Mrs. Joyce was in the middle of replying that she was grandly, and had
just run over to Mrs. Keogh on a message, when Theresa herself came in.

Denis jumped up quickly, saying: "Ah, Theresa, it's a great while since
I've seen you."

But Theresa only lifted her head without turning it, and walked straight
on as if nobody had accosted her.

"Arrah, now, Theresa darlint, don't you see Denis O'Meara?" said her
mother, puzzled and rather dismayed.

And then Theresa did turn and look at him. "Yis, I see him," she
said--and, indeed, she might as easily have overlooked the red flame in
a lantern as the tall scarlet lancer in her mother's little
misty-cornered room. "I see him," she said, "and I hate the sight of
him." And thereupon she turned again, and walked out of the door,
leaving a dead silence behind her.

This was one of the very few harsh sayings that Theresa Joyce has
uttered in the course of her long life, and it came like a shock upon
her hearers.

Mrs. Joyce at last said blankly: "What at all has took the child?"

And Bessie Kilfoyle said to Denis, who stood dumbfounded: "But indeed
now, you may be sure there's not a many up here, at any rate, who do
that."

But he replied: "If _she_ does, it's many enough for me, Mrs. Kilfoyle.
And I won't stop here to be drivin' her out of the house. So I'll say
good-bye to yous kindly, for I'll be off now to Dublin to-morra or next
day."

"And in coorse," Mrs. Joyce remarked ruefully, after he had departed,
retreading his steps through the bright fresh morning with so
crestfallen a mien that all the neighbours knew things had not run
smoothly, "you couldn't raisonably expec' him to stay here to be hated
the sight of. And indeed, what wid one thing and another, it's none too
good thratement the poor lad's got up at Lisconnel, more's the pity."

Theresa herself never had any explanation to offer of "why she would be
that cross wid poor Denis O'Meara." Her mother accounted for it by pique
at the Carberys' ill-timed gossip about his imaginary courtship of Mary
Anne Neligan; and Mrs. Kilfoyle was for a while inclined to the same
opinion, until one day by chance she espied in the little old tin box
which contained Theresa's treasures, a roll of bright yellow ribbon
wrapped up very carefully; and thenceforward she silently ceased to hope
that things might all come right yet, if Denis O'Meara came