es quite cock-sure,
as he is, that one won't be hit, I don't see the courage."

"Oh, I do!"

"But now about this ball?" said Edith. "Here we are, lone damsels,
making butter in our father's halls, and turning down the beds in the
lady's chamber, unable to buy anything because we are boycotted, and
with no money to buy it if we were not. And we can't stir out of the
house lest we should be shot, and I don't suppose that such a thing
as a pair of gloves is to be got anywhere."

"I've got gloves for both of us," said Ada.

"Put by for a rainy day. What a girl you are for providing for
difficulties! And you've got silk stockings too, I shouldn't wonder."

"Of course I have."

"And two ball dresses, quite new?"

"Not quite new. They are those we wore at Hacketstown before the
flood."

"Good gracious! How were Noah's daughters dressed? Or were they
dressed at all?"

"You always turn everything into nonsense," said Ada, petulantly.

"To be told I'm to wear a dress that had touched the heart of a
patriarch, and had perhaps gone well nigh to make me a patriarch's
bride! But taking it for granted that the ball dresses with all their
appurtenances are here, fit to win the heart of a modern Captain
instead of an old patriarch, is there no other reason why we should
not go?"

"What reason?" asked Ada, in a melancholy tone.

"There are reasons. You go to papa, and see whether he has not
reasons. He will tell you that every shilling should be saved for
Florian's school."

"It won't take many shillings to go to Galway. We couldn't well write
to Captain Clayton and tell him that we can't afford it."

"People keep those reasons in the background," said Edith, "though
people understand them. And then papa will say that in our condition
we ought to be ashamed to show our faces."

"What have we done amiss?"

"Not you or I perhaps," said Edith; "but poor Florian. I am
determined,--and so are you,--to take Florian to our very hearts, and
to forgive him as though this thing had never been done. He is to
us the same darling boy, as though he had never been present at the
flood gates; as though he had had no hand in bringing these evils to
Morony Castle. You and I have been angry, but we have forgiven him.
To us he is as dear as ever he was. But they know in the county what
it was that was done by Florian Jones, and they talk about it among
themselves, and they speak of you and me as Florian's sisters. And
they speak of pa