id Hennessey, "you mayn't want to go to parties now, but you
will when you are a bit older. However, you can please yourself--Do you
want to go to America?"

"I do," said Phyl. "It's not that I want to leave you, but there is
something that tells me I have got to go. When I read the letter first
this morning, I was delighted to think that Mr. Pinckney was not still
angry with me, and I liked the idea of the change, for Dublin is a bit
dreary after Kilgobbin and--and well, I _will_ say it--I don't care for
some of the people I have met in Dublin. But since then a new feeling has
come over me. I think it came as I was walking down here to the office.
It's a feeling as if something were pulling me ever so slightly, yet still
pulling me from over there. My father said that there was more of mother
in me than him. I remember he said that once--well, perhaps it's that. She
came from over there."

"Maybe it is," said Hennessey.

CHAPTER IX

The thing was settled definitely that night, Mrs. Hennessey resisting the
idea at first, more, one might have fancied from her talk, because the
idea was anti-national than from love of Phyl, though, as a matter of
fact, she was fond enough of the girl.

"It's what's left Ireland what it is," went on the good lady. "Cripples
and lunatics, that's all that's left of us with your emigration; all the
good blood of Ireland flowing away from her and not a drop, scarcely,
coming back."

"I'll come back," said Phyl, "you need not fear about that--some day."

"Ay, some day," said Mrs. Hennessey, and stared into the fire. Then the
spirit moving her, she began to discant on things past and people
vanished.

Synge, and Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde, who was the real genius of the
family, only his genius "stuck in him somehow and wouldn't come out." She
passed from people who had vanished to places that had changed, and only
stopped when the servant came in with the announcement that supper was
ready.

Then at supper, lo and behold! she discussed the going away of Phyl, as
though it were a matter arranged and done with and carrying her full
consent and approval.

During the weeks following, Phyl's impending journey kept Mrs. Hennessey
busy in a spasmodic way. One might have fancied from the preparations and
lists of things necessary that the girl was off to the wilds of New Guinea
or some region equally destitute of shops.

Hennessey remonstrated, and then let her have her way--it k