go wit' her?"

"How would annybody be goin' an' she up an' away before there was a
foot out o' bed in the house?" answered Mike Duffy impatiently. "'T
was herself that caught sight of Nora stealin' out o' the door like a
thief, an' meself getting me best sleep at the time. Herself had to
sit up an' laugh in the bed and be plaguin' me wit' her tarkin'. 'Look
at Nora!' says she. 'Where's Nora?' says I, wit' a great start. I
thought something had happened the poor shild. 'Oh, go to slape, you
fool!' says Mary Ann. ''T is only four o'clock,' says she, 'an' that
grasshopper greenhorn can't wait for broad day till she go out an' see
the whole of Ameriky.' So I wint off to sleep again; the first bell
was biginnin' on the mill, and I had an hour an' a piece, good, to
meself after that before Mary Ann come scoldin'. I don't be sleepin'
so well as some folks the first part of the night."

Mr. Patrick Quin ignored the interest of this autobiographical
statement, and with a contemptuous shake of the head began to feel in
his pocket for a pipe. Every one knew that Mike Duffy was a person
much too fond of his ease, and that all the credit of their prosperity
belonged to his hard-worked wife. She had reared a family of
respectable sons and daughters, who were all settled and doing well for
themselves, and now she was helping to bring out some nephews and
nieces from the old country. She was proud to have been born a Quin;
Patrick Quin was her brother and a man of consequence.

"'Deed, I 'd like well to see the poor shild," said Patrick. "I'd no
thought they 'd land before the day or to-morrow mornin', or I 'd have
been over last night. I suppose she brought all the news from home?"

"The folks is all well, thanks be to God," proclaimed Mr. Duffy
solemnly. "'T was late when she come; 't was on the quarter to nine
she got here. There 's been great deaths after the winther among the
old folks. Old Peter Murphy's gone, she says, an' his brother that
lived over by Ballycannon died the same week with him, and Dan Donahoe
an' Corny Donahoe's lost their old aunt on the twelfth of March, that
gave them her farm to take care of her before I came out. She was old
then, too."

"Faix, it was time for the old lady, so it was," said Patrick Quin,
with affectionate interest. "She 'd be the oldest in the parish this
tin years past."

"Nora said 't was a fine funeral; they 'd three priests to her, and
everything of the best.