about the mental and
moral qualities of her son little Larry, who replied to her
animadversions with over-reaching protestations about matches and
theories of spontaneous combustion. While they wrangled in the
background, the young men inspected the conflagration, which proved to
be less extensive than it looked, though undoubtedly serious enough to
have soon put the sleeping children past waking, if rescue had not come.
A heap of blankets and other bedding, that smouldered and blazed near
the front door, was the source of the most stiffling smoke; and when it
had been subdued by many buckets of water, everybody began to drag what
bits of the furniture they could out of harm's way. There was not much,
because, as Wogan explained, he had sent "the marrow of it" to his
sister at Ballymacartrican; and the legs of the largest table were
charred so badly that it collapsed with a crash "the instiant minyit it
set its four feet on the ground," as Mrs. Massey said. However, there
were two smaller ones not much the worse, and three or four chairs, and
a couple of stools, and some pots and pans, and a small clothes-horse,
and a wagging clock, whose round white face glimmered through the dusk
like a fallen moon as it lay flat on the grass. All these things made a
little crowd on the plot of sward by the door.

"And what will you be doin' wid them now?" said Mrs. Massey. "There's
my place below you'd be welcome to stand them in as long as you plase.
'Deed would you, sir. The dear knows I'm not throubled wid too many
sticks of furnitur'. That's a very handy-sized washin'-tub Larry's after
carryin' out for you. I was noticin' to-day ours has a lake in it this
long while back that dhrips over everythin'. I must get himself to thry
mend it."

"That's a _lovely_ table," suddenly said Mad Bell, who had hitherto made
no remarks. "A rael grand one it is," she repeated, in a wistful sort of
way, smoothing the leaf fondly with her hand.

"And very welcome you'd be to have it in a prisint, ma'am, if you've
e'er a fancy for it; ay, or for the matter of that to the whole lot of
them altogether," said Matthew Wogan, who, with his arms full of the
smoky twins, felt a weight of gratitude which he would gladly have
expressed in deeds. "Little vally there is on them--it's a small thing
after what you're after doin' for us. I wouldn't like to be payin' away
me bit of money from the childer, or else--But if I auctioned them
things off the way I was