t to be
talking about myself. It isn't that I love Mother less, but Mother is
so happy. She would always find something good in my failures.
But--to see Father's face light up...!"

"He looks rather sad," Miss Creagh said wistfully.

"Yes, though he can be uncommonly jolly. We have had such rags
together in London. Why, here is Shot." He stooped to fondle the head
of a beautiful red setter. "He must have got shut up in the garden.
What I can't understand about Shot is his indifference to you."

"He knows that in my secret heart I'm afraid of dogs,--a dreadful
admission, isn't it? I think it was our old nurse. I can always
remember her driving a dog out of the nursery. 'Nasty thing!' she used
to say. 'You shall not come near my baby.' I suppose I got the idea
quite in babyhood that a dog was something noxious. Not that the
others minded. The house was always full of dogs."

"Oh, you'll get over that. Won't she, Shot? Do you think his hair and
eyes are like my Mother's?"

"Like?" Miss Creagh was puzzled. "Oh, surely not! How could a dog's
hair and eyes be like a person's. Your beautiful mother! It seems
such an odd comparison."

"Oh, well--Shot is beautiful too."

Despite his infatuation Terry felt a little disappointed in Miss Creagh.

Sir Shawn and Lady O'Gara had gone on into the next paddock, which
belonged to the young mares. There was a momentary excitement. One of
the horses had got through after them and was racing up and down
between the hurdles whinnying loudly. By the time he was secured and
put back in his proper quarters the young people were out of sight.

CHAPTER II

PATSY REMEMBERS

"Shot's a good dog," Patsy Kenny was wont to observe in his slow way,
"an' his father before him was a good dog. Yet I wouldn't be sayin'
but what ould Shot, the grandfather, wasn't the pick o' the basket."

Old Shot had lived for five years after Sir Shawn O'Gara's marriage to
Mary Creagh, which had sorely offended and alienated Mrs. Comerford,
who had brought up the girl from childhood and loved her like a
daughter. When he had died it was by Lady O'Gara's wish that the dog
was buried in the grass-plot just outside the drawing-room window. She
could see the mound from the window recess, where she sat to write her
letters, in which she kept her work-table, the book she was reading,
and various other belongings; she had screened it off so that the deep
recess was like a little room