it charged double."

"But won't they sell you anything at Tuam?"

"Not a ha'porth. We couldn't get so much as soap for house-washing,
unless Mrs. Blake had stood by us and let us have her soap. Ada and
I have to do every bit of washing about the place. I do think well
of Peter because he insists on washing his own shirts and stockings.
Unfortunately we haven't got a mangle, and we have to iron the sheets
if we want them to look at all nice. Ada's sheets and mine, and
Florian's, are only just rough pressed. Of course we get tea and
those things down from Dublin. Only think of the way in which the
tradespeople are ruining themselves. Everything has to go to Dublin
to be sold: potatoes and cattle, and now butter. Papa says that
they won't pay for the carriage. When you come to think of it, this
boycotting is the most ruinous invention on both sides. When poor
Florian declared that he would go to mass after he had first told the
story about Pat Carroll, they swore they would boycott the chapel if
he entered the door. Not a single person would stay to receive the
mass. So he wouldn't go. It was not long after that when he became
afraid to show his face outside the hall-door."

"And yet you can come here to this ball?" said Mrs. D'Arcy.

"Exactly so. I will go where I please till they boycott the very
roads from under my feet. I expect to hear soon that they have
boycotted Ada and me, so that no young man shall come and marry us.
Of course, I don't understand such things, but it seems to me that
the Government should interfere to defend us."

When the evening came, and the witching hour was there, Ada and Edith
appeared at the barracks as bright as their second-hand finery could
make them. They had awarded to them something of especial glory as
being boycotted heroines, and were regarded with a certain amount of
envy by the Miss Blakes, Miss Bodkins, Miss Lamberts, Miss Ffrenchs,
and Miss Parsons of the neighbourhood. They had, none of them, as yet
achieved the full honours of boycotting, though some of them were
half-way to it. The Miss Ffrenchs told them how their father's sheep
had been boycotted, the shepherd having been made to leave his place.
The Miss Blakes had been boycotted because their brother had been
refused a car. And the Bodkins of Ballytowngal were held to have been
boycotted _en masse_ because of the doings at Moytubber gorse. But
none of them had been boycotted as had been the Miss Jones'; and
theref