To Annie Connex the Kavanagh family was abomination. The father got
eighteen shillings a week for doing a bit of gardening. Ned had been a
quarryman, now he was out of work and did odd jobs. The Kavanaghs took
in a baby, and they got five or six shillings a week for that. Mrs.
Kavanagh sold geraniums at more than their value, and she got more than
the market value for her chickens--she sold them to charitable folk who
were anxious to encourage poultry farming; and now Julia, the second
daughter, had gone in for lace making, and she made a lace that looked
as if it were cut out of paper, and sold it for three times its market
value.

And to sell above market value was abominable to Annie Connex. Her idea
of life was order and administration, and the village she lived in was
thriftless and idle. The Kavanaghs received out-door relief; they got
two shillings a week off the rates, though every Saturday evening they
bought a quarter barrel of porter, and Annie Connex could not believe
in the future of a country that would tolerate such a thing. If her son
had married a Kavanagh her life would have come to an end, and the
twenty years she had worked for him would have been wasted years. Thank
God, Kate was out of her son's way, and on seeing Mary she resolved
that Pat should never cross the M'Shane's threshold.

Mrs. M'Shane looked round the comfortable kitchen, with sides of bacon,
and home-cured hams hanging from the rafters. She had not got on in
life as well as Mrs. Connex, and she knew she would never have a
beautiful closed range, but an open hearth till the end of her days.
She could never have a nice dresser with a pretty carved top. The
dresser in her kitchen was deal, and had no nice shining brass knobs on
it. She would never have a parlour, and this parlour had in it a
mahogany table and a grandfather's clock that would show you the moon
on it just the same as it was in the sky, and there was a glass over
the fireplace. This was Annie Connex's own parlour. The parlour on the
other side of the house was even better furnished, for in the summer
months Mrs. Connex bedded and boarded her lodgers for one pound or one
pound five shillings a week.

"So she was married to-day, and Father Maguire married her after all. I
never thought he would have brought her to it. Well, I'm glad she's
married." It rose to Mary's lips to say, "you are glad she didn't marry
your son," but she put back the words. "It comes upon me as