g man,
instructs Orlando to practice his wooing on her.]

"It was very odd my finding you down here, all ready before me, wasn't
it?"

"'Deed it was: your mother was a very good woman to me that morning,
anyhow."

"And tell me now, Anty, do you like the inn?"

"'Deed I do--but it's quare, like."

"How quare?"

"Why, having Meg and Jane here: I wasn't ever used to anyone to talk
to, only just the servants."

"You'll have plenty always to talk to now--eh, Anty?" and Martin tried
a sweet look at his lady love.

"I'm shure I don't know. Av' I'm only left quiet, that's what I most
care about."

"But, Anty, tell me--you don't want always to be what you call quiet?"

"Oh! but I do--why not?"

"But you don't mane, Anty, that you wouldn't like to have some kind of
work to do--some occupation, like?"

"Why, I wouldn't like to be idle; but a person needn't be idle because
they're quiet."

"And that's thrue, Anty." And Martin broke down again.

"There'd be a great crowd in chapel, I suppose?" said Anty.

"There was a great crowd."

"And what was father Geoghegan preaching about?"

"Well, then, I didn't mind. To tell the truth, Anty, I came out most
as soon as the preaching began; only I know he told the boys to pray
that the liberathor might be got out of his throubles; and so they
should--not that there's much to throuble him, as far as the verdict's
concerned."

"Isn't there then? I thought they made him out guilty?"

"So they did, the false ruffians: but what harum 'll that do? they
daren't touch a hair of his head!"

Politics, however, are not a favourable introduction to love-making:
so Martin felt, and again gave up the subject, in the hopes that he
might find something better. "What a fool the man is!" thought Meg to
herself, at the door--"if I had a lover went on like that, wouldn't I
pull his ears!"

Martin got up--walked across the room--looked out of the little
window--felt very much ashamed of himself, and, returning, sat himself
down on the sofa.

"Anty," he said, at last, blushing nearly brown as he spoke; "Were you
thinking of what I was spaking to you about before I went to Dublin?"

Anty blushed also, now. "About what?" she said.

"Why, just about you and me making a match of it. Come, Anty, dear,
what's the good of losing time? I've been thinking of little else; and,
after what's been between us, you must have thought the matther over
too, though you do let on t