oo deep in his own calculations to
waste a thought on such a speculation.

"My wife's uncle, Joe Godfrey, married an Englishwoman. The sister
was aunt to some rich city banker; and indeed, to tell the truth, his
friends in Ireland never thought much of the connection but you see
times are changed. They are up now, and we are down, the way of the
world! It 's little I ever thought of claiming relationship with the
like o' them!"

"But if it 's they who seek us, papa?" whispered Kate.

"Ay, that alters the case, my dear; not but I'd as soon excuse the
politeness. Here we are, living in a small way; till matters come round
in Ireland, we can't entertain them, not even give them a dinner-party."

"Oh, dearest papa," broke in Nelly, "is not our poverty a blessing if it
save us the humiliation of being absurd? Why should we think of such a
thing? Why should we, with our straitened means and the habits narrow
fortune teaches, presume even to a momentary equality with those so much
above us."

"Faith, it's true enough!" cried Dalton, his cheek flushed with anger.
"We are changed, there's no doubt of it; or it is not a Dalton would say
the words you 've just said. I never knew before that the best in the
land wasn't proud to come under our roof."

"When we had a roof," said Nelly, firmly. "And if these ancestors had
possessed a true and a higher pride, mayhap we might still have one.
Had they felt shame to participate in schemes of extravagance and costly
display, had they withheld encouragement from a ruinous mode of living,
we might still be dwellers in our own home and our own country."

Dalton seemed thunderstruck at the boldness of a speech so unlike the
gentle character of her who had uttered it. To have attributed any
portion of the family calamities to their own misconduct to have
laid the blame of their downfall to any score save that of English
legislation, acts of parliament, grand-jury laws, failure of the potato
crop, tithes, Terry alts, or smut in the wheat was a heresy he never, in
his gloomiest moments, had imagined, and now he was to hear it from the
lips of his own child.

"Nelly Nelly Dal ton," said he; "but why do I call you Dalton? Have you
a drop of our blood in your veins at all, or is it the Godfreys you take
after? Extravagance, ruinous living, waste, what 'll you say next?" He
could n't continue, indignation and anger seemed almost to suffocate
him.

"Papa, dearest, kindest papa!" cried Nelly