would
be content so to stay almost without a word; but when the winds blew,
and the heavy spray came up in blinding volumes, and the white-headed
sea-monsters were roaring in their fury against the rocks, she would be
there alone with her hat in her hand, and her hair drenched. She would
watch the gulls wheeling and floating beneath her, and would listen to
their screams and try to read their voices. She would envy the birds as
they seemed to be worked into madness by the winds which still were not
strong enough to drive them from their purposes. To linger there among
the rocks seemed to be the only delight left to her in life,--except
that intense delight which a mother has in loving her child. She herself
read but little, and never put a hand upon the piano. But she had a
faculty of sitting and thinking, of brooding over her own past years and
dreaming of her daughter's future life, which never deserted her. With
her the days were doubtless very sad, but it cannot truly be said that
they were dull or tedious.

And there was a sparkle of humour about her too, which would sometimes
shine the brightest when there was no one by her to appreciate it. Her
daughter would smile at her mother's sallies,--but she did so simply
in kindness. Kate did not share her mother's sense of humour,--did not
share it as yet. With the young the love of fun is gratified generally
by grotesque movement. It is not till years are running on that the
grotesqueness of words and ideas is appreciated. But Mrs. O'Hara would
expend her art on the household drudge, or on old Barney Corcoran who
came with the turf,--though by neither of them was she very clearly
understood. Now and again she would have a war of words with the
priest, and that, I think, she liked. She was intensely combative, if
ground for a combat arose; and would fight on any subject with any
human being--except her daughter. And yet with the priest she never
quarrelled; and though she was rarely beaten in her contests with him,
she submitted to him in much. In matters touching her religion she
submitted to him altogether.

Kate O'Hara was in face very like her mother;--strangely like, for in
much she was very different. But she had her mother's eyes,--though hers
were much softer in their lustre, as became her youth,--and she had her
mother's nose, but without that look of scorn which would come upon her
mother's face when the nostrils were inflated. And in that peculiar
shortness