belong. This circumstance particularly embarrassed
the inexperienced girl, whose gentle heart at the moment sympathized
with the stranger's anxieties, whatever they may have been, and she
hesitated a little, when the woman approached, in addressing her. At
length she spoke:

"We wor jist sayin' to one another," she observed, "that it looked as if
you wished to spake to either this woman or me."

"You're right enough, then," she replied; "I have something to say to
her, and a single word to yourself, too."

"An' what is it you have to say to me?" asked Nelly; "I hope it isn't to
borrow money from me, bekase if it is, my banker has failed, an' left me
as poor as a church mouse."

"Are you in distress, poor woman," inquired the generous and
kind-hearted girl. "Maybe you're hungry; it isn't much we can do for
you; but little as it is, if you come home with me, you'll come to a
family that won't scruple to share the little they have now with any one
that's worse off than themselves."

"Ay, you may well say 'now,'" observed the prophet's wife; "for until
now, it's they that could always afford it; an' indeed it was the ready
an' the willin' bit was ever at your father's table."

The stranger looked upon the serene and beautiful features of Mave with
a long gaze of interest and admiration; after which she added, with a
sigh:

"And you, I believe, are the girl they talk so much about for the fair
face and good heart? Little pinetration it takes to see that you have
both, my sweet girl. If I don't mistake, your name is Mave Sullivan, or
_Gra Gal_, as the people mostly call you."

Mave, whose natural delicacy was tender and pure as the dew-drop of
morning, on hearing her praises thus uttered by the lips of a stranger,
blushed so deeply, that her whole neck and face became suffused with
that delicious crimson of modesty which, alas! is now of such rare
occurrence among the sex, unconscious that, in doing so, she was adding
fresh testimony to the impressions which had gone so generally abroad
of her extraordinary beauty, and the many unostentatious virtues which
adorned her humble life.

"Mave Sullivan is my name," she replied, smiling through her blushes:
"as to the nickname, the people will call one what they like, no matther
whether it's right or wrong."

"The people's seldom wrong, then, in givin' names o' the kind," returned
the stranger; "but in your case, they're right at all events, as any
one may know that lo