ugh the fire. But still an' all it never does be him that sets the
mischief goin'."

"But Turlough is only eight years old. Terry is ten, and two years of a
bush life at that age make a great deal more difference than the count of
the days," said Madam musingly.

Madam Trimleston was a pretty old lady who had soft white hair and sweet
blue eyes, and wore handsome lace caps with peachy ribbons in them; and she
usually sat in a high-backed arm-chair either at the fire or the window in
her own room with Nurse Nancy attending on her. For Madam was very
delicate, and since she had been left alone in old Trimleston House she
rarely went down into the great rooms below.

"It would make you cry," Nancy would say, "to see her sittin' there all by
herself, afther the family she rared, an' them all scatthered about over
the four corners of the earth; an' the rest o' them in heaven!"

It is true that Madam had sons holding posts in different lands, but her
daughters had "all died on her", as Nancy lamented. However, though old
Trimleston House stood in a lonely part of Ireland, between the hills and
the sea, yet Madam was not so desolate as might have been supposed, for she
was beloved by all the "neighbours" for twenty miles around, and poor and
rich made their sympathy felt by her. And everyone was glad when her
favourite son in Africa sent home his two children to her care; no one so
glad as the dear old granny herself, unless it might be Nurse Nancy.

To tell how the grandmother and nurse, whose hands had once been so full
and were now so long empty, went into the deserted nurseries and furbished
them up till everything looked as good as new would require a chapter to
itself. A handy man was sent for to come two miles and paint up the old
rocking-horse which had been standing for years with its nose in a corner
of a closet and its sides all blistered with damp; and nine-pins, tops, and
marbles were hunted out of drawers and cupboards.

"Mercy me! Look here, madam! If this isn't the dog that Misther Jack broke
the ear off knockin' its head against the wall one day and him in a
passion!" said Nurse Nancy.

She was afraid to bring forth the dolls, with their associations, but the
mother herself went to look for them.

"We are getting a little girl, Nancy," she said, "and we can't have nothing
but boys' toys for her to play with."

Nancy nodded her head, but Madam went boldly to the drawer, looked at the
dolls with their f