s in view they had landed at
Queenstown, he and his wife, a girl belonging to very respectable,
decent people in the county Wicklow. "So next mornin', walkin' along the
Quay, who should I see but me gintleman there, and another chap along
with him, and both of them lookin' as wild as if they'd been caught. And
says I to Sally, 'You bet, that's Felix from our place at home;' and
right I was, and just slick in time to stop him goin' on board." Paddy
had then left his wife with her family in Wicklow, where he had seen a
promising farm; and he and Felix were now on their way to fetch their
mother thither.

"And it's in the quare consternation you'd ha' been," said Theresa
Joyce, "if you'd landed up at Laraghmena, and found her quit out of it
the way she was."

"And that would ha' happint us," said Felix, "if it hadn't been for
young Dan Ryan in there just now passin' the remark that we couldn't
expec' Father Martin to be sendin' us notices all the way to the County
Cork, and supposin' I'd very belike missed the right day for the stamer
be raison of it. For if we hadn't got fightin' and tumblin' out of the
house, you might aisy ha' gone along wid yourselves, and niver known we
were in the place at all. 'Twas great luck entirely."

Fortune, in truth, had seemingly taken Mrs. Morrough and her affairs
into the highest favour. Even the luck-insurance of a trivial loss was
not wanting to her, as in her hasty exit she had dropped her new teapot,
which broke into many pieces on Mrs. Doyne's floor. So that, as has been
said, she never beheld it in its beauty. But the very skies had cleared
above her head, swept by a waft of wind that scattered the clouds faster
and further than a drift of withered leaves, and the sinking sun
broadened in splendour before the eyes that had lost sight of him
through ten interminable days. The wet stones on the road glistened like
jewels, and the shallowest pools between them held unfathomed deeps of
blue, when the Morroughs set off for Laraghmena, where they intended to
sleep the night, and bid their friends farewell. "And if it's themselves
won't be in the fine astonishment when they set eyes upon you, woman
dear!" said Theresa Joyce, "for if you'd been twenty year away
thravellin' the world crooked and straight, you couldn't ha' come back a
diff'rinter crathur from what you were, and we settin' out this woeful
mornin'. Little notion you had what was comin' to you, and it all the
while runnin' up