with the
rents and things. Will you come to Mary's wedding to-morrow, Thady?"

"Quarrelling with him! 'Deed then and I will not, but it seems he
wants to quarrel with me."

"When I do want to quarrel with you, Captain Ussher,--that is, should
I ever want,--you may be quite certain it's not in a round about way
I'll be telling you of it."

"No, don't, my boy, for ten to one I shouldn't understand what you'd
be after. Didn't you say you'd walk up to Aughermore, Miss
Macdermot?"

"I'm sorry to baulk Feemy of her walk, Captain Ussher, if she did say
so. It's not very often I ask her to put herself out for me; but this
afternoon, I shall feel obliged to her not to go."

Captain Ussher stared, and Feemy opened wide her large bright eyes;
for what reason could her brother desire her to stay in doors?

"What can you want me in the house for, Thady, this time of day?"

"Well never mind, Feemy; I do want you, and you'll oblige me by
staying."

Feemy still had on the new collar, and she pulled it off and threw it
on the table; she evidently imagined that it had something to do with
her brother's unusual request. She certainly would not have put it on
in that loose way, had she thought he would have seen it; but then he
so seldom came in there.

"Well, Captain Ussher," she at last said slowly, "I suppose then I
can't go to Aughermore to-day."

Captain Ussher had turned to the window as if not to notice Thady's
request, and now came back into the middle of the room, as if Feemy's
last sentence had been the first he had heard on the subject.

"Oh! you have changed your mind, then," said he; and his face
acquired the look that Feemy dreaded. "Ladies, you know, are at
liberty to think twice."

"But, Thady, I did wish to go to Aughermore particularly to-day;
wouldn't this evening or to-morrow do?"

"No, Feemy," and Thady looked still blacker than Myles; "this evening
won't do, nor to-morrow."

"Well, Captain Ussher, you see we must put it off," and she looked
deprecatingly at her lover.

His answering look gave her no comfort; far from it, but he said, "I
see no must about it, but that's for you to judge; perhaps you should
ask your father's leave to go so far from home."

This was a cruel cut at all the fallen family, the father's
incapacity, the sister's helplessness, and the brother's weak
authority. Feemy did not feel it so, she felt nothing to be cruel
that came from Ussher; but Thady felt it strongly, he was