a word to her
but she has a look in her eye that's next door to calling you a
fool.--I don't know where she is at all to-day."

"What time did she go out?"

"After breakfast this morning."

"And now it's supper-time--ha! that's good! Can't you give me a bit of
bread, or do you want to eat the whole loaf yourself? Try to remember
that I do pay for my food."

With an angry shake of the head his wife began to cut the loaf, and
continued speaking--

"'Where are you going to, Julia Elizabeth?' said I. 'Out,' said she,
and not another word could I get from her. Her own mother, mind you,
and her best clothes----"

Mr. O'Reilly ate the last slice of bread and arose from the table.

"I suppose," said he, "she is loafing about the streets with some young
puppy who has nothing of his own but a cigarette and a walking-stick,
and they both borrowed. I'll have a talk with her when she comes in,
and we'll see if she tells me to shut up."

The door banged, the room shook, and Mrs. O'Reilly settled to her
frustrated tea, but her thoughts still ran on her daughter.

It was at this point that, directed by love and etiquette, Mr. O'Grady
knocked at the door. Mrs. O'Reilly was again cutting the loaf in an
exasperation which was partly hunger and partly maternal, and, as she
cut, she communed with herself--

"As if," said she, "I haven't enough trouble trying to keep a cranky
man like her pa in good humour, without being plagued by Julia
Elizabeth"--she paused, for there was a knock at the door.--"If," said
she to the door, "you are a woman with ferns in a pot I don't want you,
and I don't want Dublin Bay herrings, or boot-laces either, so you can
go away.--The crankiness of that man is more than tongue can tell. As
Miss Carty says, I shouldn't stand it for an hour--Come in, can't
you--and well she may say it, and she a spinster without a worry under
heaven but her suspicious nature and her hair falling out. And then to
be treated the way I am by that girl! It'd make a saint waxy so it
would.--Good heavens! can't you come in, or are you deaf or lame or
what?" and in some exasperation she arose and went to the door. She
looked in perplexity for one moment from her food to her visitor, but
as good manners and a lady are never separate she welcomed and drew the
young man inside--

"Come in, Mr. O'Grady," said she. "How are you now at all? Why it's
nearly a week since you were here. Your mother's well I hope (sit down
there now a