'll bate thim with a blackthorn stick!'

"Naturally I was horrified. This, I thought, would explain everything:
no mother, and an irritable, cruel father.

"'Will he really do such a thing?' I asked, feeling as if I must know
the truth.

"'Sure he will not, ma'am!' she answered cheerfully. 'He wouldn't lift a
feather to thim, not if they murdthered the whole counthryside, ma'am.'

"Well, they travelled third class to Cork, and we came first, so we did
not meet, and I did not ask their surnames; but it seems that they were
being brought to their father, whom I met many years ago in America."

As she did not volunteer any further information, we did not like to ask
her where, how many years ago, or under what circumstances. 'Teasing' of
this sort does not appeal to the sophisticated at any time, but it seems
unspeakably vulgar to touch on matters of sentiment with a woman of
middle age. If she has memories, they are sure to be sad and sacred
ones; if she has not, that perhaps is still sadder. We agreed, however,
when the evening was over, that Dr. La Touche was probably the love of
her youth--unless, indeed, he was simply an old friend, and the degree
of Salemina's attachment had been exaggerated; something that is very
likely to happen in the gossip of a New England town, where they always
incline to underestimate the feeling of the man, and overrate that of
the woman, in any love affair. 'I guess she'd take him if she could
get him' is the spoken or unspoken attitude of the public in rural or
provincial New England.

The professor is grave, but very genial when he fully recalls the fact
that he is in company, and has not, like the Trappist monks, taken vows
of silence. Francesca behaved beautifully, on the whole, and made no
embarrassing speeches, although she was in her gayest humour. Salemina
blushed a little when the young sinner dragged into the conversation the
remark that, undoubtedly, from the beginning of the sixth century to the
end of the eighth, Ireland was the University of Europe, just as Greece
was in the late days of the Roman Republic, and asked our guest when
Ireland ceased to be known as 'Insula sanctorum et doctorum,' the island
of saints and scholars.

We had seen her go into Salemina's bedroom, and knew perfectly well that
she had consulted the Peabody notebook, lying open on the desk; but the
professor looked as surprised as if he had heard a pretty paroquet quote
Gibbon. I don't like to see