what good is jewellery to me? You must take
them."

"No, no!" cried Kathleen, hastily. "You must keep them for Mr. Quirk's
wife."

A smile lit up the old lady's face as she looked at the brooch in her
hand and then at Kathleen.

"I just will do that same," she said.

A peremptory knock at the door, and Denis himself entered. He smiled as
he noted the array of photographs.

"Which is the uglier," he asked Kathleen, "the picture or the original?
Fire away, mother, and tell Miss O'Connor every detail of my life. Cut
my first tooth when I was seven days old; spoke--or did I swear--at
three months, fought my first fight on my first birthday, and I've been
fighting ever since."

"Oh, Denis, Denis, you are as much an omadhaun as ever," sighed Mrs.
Quirk. "But he was a fine boy, Kathleen!"

"And into a fine man he has grown, mother!" laughed Denis. "But what
could you expect with such a mother? Father alive, Miss O'Connor?"

The abruptness of the question was quite disconcerting to Kathleen.

"No," she replied; "my father is dead."

"Sorry I asked," said Denis.

"God rest his soul! They do say he was a great man; but what could you
expect, and him an O'Connor?" said Mrs. Quirk.

"Hem!" began Denis, but he checked himself and asked: "Any relations
living, Miss O'Connor?"

"There's her brother Desmond, as handsome as herself," said Mrs. Quirk.

"Anything like me? But that's not to be expected. Where does he work?"

"My brother is a reporter at 'The Observer' office," replied Kathleen.
Had it not been for Mrs. Quirk's presence she would have checked his
questions once and for all.

"I must look him up to-day. I start operations in Grey Town this
afternoon. Did it ever strike you that this place needs stirring up?
It's been sleeping ever since it was born. I have come here to make
things hum, I tell you that."

Kathleen laughed at the thought of Grey Town humming. All her life she
had known it as a gentle, quiet town, to which excitement was unknown
and undesired.

"What do you intend to do?" she asked.

"Everything," he answered. "See here, in twelve months' time you will
scarcely know Grey Town. There will be squalls, of course, and plenty of
fighting. But when I get to work I'll make the old place boom. Ran a
paper in the States, and divided the town into friends and enemies. I
was just over the last libel action brought against 'The Firebrand' by
the last enemy on my list when I sold out. The paper wen