the moon, I
wouldn't marry such a man; would you, Alice?'

'I certainly wouldn't like to,' and her sense of humour being now
tickled by the conversation, she added slyly: 'but you were counting up
the good matches in the county.'

'Ah! so we were,' said the old lady. 'Well, there is Mr. Adair. I am
sure no girl would wish for a better husband.'

'Oh, the old frump! why he must be forty if he's a day. You remember,
Alice, it was he who took me down to dinner at Lord Dungory's. And he
talked all the time of his pamphlet on the Amalgamation of the Unions,
which was then in the hands of the printer; and the other in which he
had pulled Mr. Parnell's ears, _Ireland under the Land League_, and the
series of letters he was thinking of contributing to the _Irish Times_
on high-farming _versus_ peasant proprietors. Just fancy, Alice, living
with such a man as that!'

'Well, I don't know what you girls think,' said Mrs. Gould, whose
opinions were moods of mind rather than convictions, 'but I assure you
he passes for being the cleverest man in the county; and it is said that
Gladstone is only waiting to give him a chance. But as you like; he
won't do, so let him pass. Then there is Mr. Ryan, he ought to be well
off; he farms thousands of acres.'

'One might as well marry a herdsman at once. Did you ever hear what he
once said to a lady at a ball; you know, about the docket?'

Alice said that she had heard the story, and the conversation turned on
Mr. Lynch. Mrs. Gould admitted that he was the worser of the two.

'He smells so dreadfully of whiskey,' said Alice timidly.

'Ah! you see she is coming out of her shell at last,' exclaimed May. 'I
saw you weren't having a very good time of it when he took you down to
dinner at Dungory Castle. I wonder they were asked. Fred told me that he
had never heard of their having been there before.'

'It is very difficult to make up a number sometimes,' suggested Mrs.
Gould; 'but they are certainly very coarse. I hear, when Mr. Ryan and
Mr. Lynch go to fairs, that they sleep with their herdsman, and in Mayo
there is a bachelor's house where they have fine times--whiskey-drinking
and dancing until three o'clock in the morning.'

'And where do the ladies come from, May?' asked Alice, for she now
looked on the girl as an inexhaustible fund of information.

'Plenty of ladies in the village,' replied Mrs. Gould, rubbing her shins
complacently; 'that's what I used to hear of in my day, and I