they were?"

Miss Clarence might have retorted that no sheep or heifers had been
killed and very little porter drunk, but she preferred to leave these
details aside and stick to her main point.

"But they didn't mean to be married," she said, "and you told me----"

"Begging your pardon, Miss," said Michael, "but they did mean it. Old
Andrew has been meaning it ever since Mrs. Nally died and left Mary with
the shop. And Mary was willing enough to go with him any day he asked
her. It's what I was telling you at the first go off. Them island people
is dying out for the want of being able to keep from going to sleep. You
seen yourself the way it was. Them ones never would have been married at
all only for your going to Inishrua and waking them up. It's thankful to
you they ought to be."

He appealed to Peter Gahan, who was crouching beside his engine under
the fore-deck.

"Oughtn't they to be thankful to the young lady, Peter," he said,
"seeing they'd never have been married only for her?"

Peter Gahan looked out from his shelter and scowled. According to the
teaching of the most advanced Socialists the marriage tie is not a
blessing but a curse.

XV. AUNT NELL

Mrs. MacDermott splashed her way across the yard towards the stable. It
was raining, softly and persistently. The mud lay deep. There were pools
of water here and there. Mrs. MacDermott neither paused nor picked her
steps. There was no reason why she should. The rain could not damage the
tweed cap on her head. Her complexion, brilliant as the complexions of
Irish women often are, was not of the kind that washes off. Her rough
grey skirt, on which rain-drops glistened, came down no further than her
knees. On her feet were a pair of rubber boots which reached up to the
hem of her skirt, perhaps further. She was comfortably indifferent to
rain and mud.

If you reckon the years since she was born, Mrs. MacDermott was nearly
forty. But that is no true way of estimating the age of man or woman.
Seen, not in the dusk with the light behind her, but in broad daylight
on horseback, she was little more than thirty. Such is the reward of
living an outdoor life in the damp climate of Connaught. And her heart
was as young as her face and figure. She had known no serious troubles
and very few of the minor cares of life. Her husband, a man twenty-five
years older than she was, died after two years of married life, leaving
her a very comfortable fortune. Nell MacDer