ood to her.

"Troth, thin, sur," said Margaret, with a short, dry laugh, "he 's the
divil's own!"

Margaret was thin and careworn, and her laugh had the mild gayety of
champagne not properly corked. These things were apparent even to Mr.
Bilkins, who was not a shrewd observer.

"I 'm afraid, Margaret," he remarked sorrowfully, "that you are not
making both ends meet."

"Begorra, I 'd be glad if I could make one ind meet!" returned Margaret.

With a duplicity quite foreign to his nature, Mr. Bilkins gradually drew
from her the true state of affairs. Mr. O'Rourke was a very bad case
indeed; he did nothing towards her support; he was almost constantly
drunk; the little money she had laid by was melting away, and would
not last until winter. Mr. O'Rourke was perpetually coming home with a
sprained ankle, or a bruised shoulder, or a broken head. He had broken
most of the furniture in his festive hours, including the cooking-stove.
"In short," as Mr. Bilkins said in relating the matter afterwards to
Mrs. Bilkins, "he had broken all those things which he should n't have
broken, and failed to break the one thing he ought to have broken long
ago--his neck, namely."

The revelation which startled Mr. Bilkins most was this: in spite
of all, Margaret loved Larry with the whole of her warm Irish heart.
Further than keeping the poor creature up waiting for him until ever
so much o'clock at night, it did not appear that he treated her
with personal cruelty. If he had beaten her, perhaps she would have
worshipped him. It needed only that.

Revolving Margaret's troubles in his thoughts as he walked homeward, Mr.
Bilkins struck upon a plan by which he could help her. When this plan
was laid before Mrs. Bilkins, she opposed it with a vehemence that
convinced him she had made up her mind to adopt it.

"Never, never will I have that ungrateful woman under this roof!" cried
Mrs. Bilkins; and accordingly the next day Mr. and Mrs. O'Rourke took
up their abode in the Bilkins mansion--Margaret as cook, and Larry as
gardener.

"I 'm convanient if the owld gintleman is," had been Mr. O'Rourke's
remark, when the proposition was submitted to him. Not that Mr. O'Rourke
had the faintest idea of gardening. He did n't know a tulip from a
tomato. He was one of those sanguine people who never hesitate to
undertake anything, and are never abashed by their herculean inability.

Mr. Bilkins did not look to Margaret's husband for any great botanic