there; somethin' got off the rails, and he
adwised wit' me, seeing I was a stranger. He said he knew you, sir."

"Oh, yes, Johnny O'Callahan. I know him well; he 's a nice b'y, too,"
answered Patrick Quin approvingly.

"Yis, sir, a pritty b'y," said Nora, and her color brightened for an
instant, but she said no more.

II.

Mike Duffy and his wife came into the Quins' kitchen one week-day
night, dressed in their Sunday clothes; they had been making a visit to
their well-married daughter in Lawrence. Patrick Quin's chair was
comfortably tipped back against the wall, and Bridget, who looked
somewhat gloomy, was putting away the white supper-dishes.

"Where 's Nora?" demanded Mike Duffy, after the first salutations.

"You may well say it; I 'm afther missing her every hour in the day,"
lamented Bridget Quin.

"Nora's gone into business on the Road then, so she has," said Patrick,
with an air of fond pride. He was smoking, and in his shirt-sleeves;
his coat lay on the wooden settee at the other side of the room.

"Hand me me old coat there before you sit down; I want me pocket," he
commanded, and Mike obeyed. Mary Ann, fresh from her journey, began at
once to give a spirited account of her daughter's best room and general
equipment for housekeeping, but she suddenly became aware that the tale
was of secondary interest. When the narrator stopped for breath there
was a polite murmur of admiration, but her husband boldly repeated his
question. "Where's Nora?" he insisted, and the Quins looked at each
other and laughed.

"Ourselves is old hins that's hatched ducks," confessed Patrick.
"Ain't I afther telling you she's gone into trade on the Road?" and he
took his pipe from his mouth,--that after-supper pipe which neither
prosperity nor adversity was apt to interrupt. "She 's set up for
herself over-right the long switch, down there at Birch Plains. Nora
'll soon be rich, the cr'atur'; her mind was on it from the first
start; 't was from one o' them O'Callahan b'ys she got the notion, the
night she come here first a greenhorn."

"Well, well, she's lost no time; ain't she got the invintion!" chuckled
Mr. Michael Duffy, who delighted in the activity of others. "What
excuse had she for Birch Plains? There's no town to it."

"'T was a chance on the Road she mint to have from the first,"
explained the proud uncle, forgetting his pipe altogether; "'twas that
she told me the first day she came out, an' she