ing and
comforting at the same time.

"There now, ye're not kilt," she said. "Shame on ye, Jane, to lift yer
han' again them. If ye lay finger on them more I'll tell yer mother."
This was always Lull's threat, and though she never kept her word it
never failed to have the same effect on the children. The thought of
making their mother unhappy was the most dreadful punishment they could
imagine. Jane walked out of the yard with her nose in the air and a
miserable feeling in her heart. But, once out of sight, she ran to her
favourite hiding-place among the sallies at the top of the garden, and
sitting down with her back to the convent wall she cried with
disappointment, and with repentance too. It was wicked to have slapped
Fly and Honeybird, but they had no business to laugh at her; and that
little brute of a Patsy was off again all by himself, and she didn't
know where he was. By-and-by she heard Mick calling her. She knew he
would be sure to look in the sallies for her, so she dried her eyes,
and crept along by the wall, and under the fence at the top of the
garden, out into the field. No good could come of letting Mick find
her; for she was still in a bad temper, and she knew it would only mean
more fights if she went home before her temper had gone. She wandered
through the fields in an aimless way, till she began to get bored, and
not any better tempered for that.

It was all Patsy's fault; if he had not put her in a temper she might
have been working at the pigeon-house with Mick; but now the whole day
was spoilt, for she could not, with dignity, go home before tea-time.
Soon she found herself in a lane, and had to stop to choose which way
she would go.

One way led to the village and the sea, the other to the big road that
ran to Castle Magee and town. It was too cold to go to the sea, and
she didn't want to go through the village with red eyes. Then the
thought came into her mind that the snowdrops might be out in the
church-yard at Castle Magee, so she turned that way.

Castle Magee was a village of about six cottages and as many bigger
houses; a damp, mouldy place, that always impressed the children with a
sense of hunger and death. They rarely saw anyone about but the
sexton, and he seemed to be perpetually at work digging graves in the
churchyard. Then, too, there was no shop, and they had no friends in
the village, and after the long walk from home all that could be hoped
for was a turnip