my pretty roses into
the bargain. Are they not sweet?--_sweet?_" holding them right under
Kit's nose.

"They are, indeed. And, by the by, here we are," pointing to a low
farmhouse in the distance.

Reaching it, and finding the door as usual open, they enter what might
be the hall in another house, but is here the kitchen. There is no
leading up to it. From the moment you cross the threshold the kitchen
lies before you.

It is a large room, if it may so be called, with a huge fireplace in
which a dozen fires might be stowed away and forgotten. Just now there
is a flame somewhere in its blackmost depths that cannot possibly annoy
these June visitors, as one has to search for it to find it.

An old woman, infirm and toothless, yet with all the remains of great
beauty, sits cowering over this hidden turf fire, mumbling to herself,
it may be, of golden days now past and gone, when she had been the
fairest colleen at mass or pattern, and had counted her lovers by the
score. Yea, those were good old times, when the sky was ever blue and
all the earth was young.

Two young women, sitting near her, but farther from the chimney-nook,
are gossiping idly, but persistently, in the soft, mellifluous brogue
that distinguishes the county Cork.

As the Beresford girls enter, these two latter women rise simultaneously
and courtesy with deep respect. The youngest of them, who is so like the
handsome old woman in the corner of the fireplace as to be unmistakably
of kin to her, comes quickly forward to greet her visitors with the
kindly grace and the absence of consciousness that distinguish the Irish
peasantry when doing the honors of their own homes. This lack of
_mauvaise honte_ arises perhaps from the fact that they are so honestly
glad to welcome a guest beneath their roof that they forget to be shy or
backward.

She makes a slight effort to pull down her tucked-up sleeves, and then
desists, for which any one with a mind artistic should be devoutly
grateful, as her arms, brown as they are from exposure to the sun, are
at least shaped to perfection. She is dressed in a maroon-colored skirt
and body, the skirt so turned up in fishwife fashion (as _we_ wore it
some seasons ago) that a dark-blue petticoat beneath, of some coarse
description, can be distinctly seen.

Her throat is a little bare, arms, as I have said, quite so, far up
above the elbows. She is stout and comely, with a beautiful laughing
mouth, and eyes of deepest g