yet. Are we not to have that honor to-day?" said
Parsons.

"I believe not; she's somewhat tired. We had a stormy time of it," said
my father, who rather hesitated about introducing his bachelor friends
to my mother without some little preparation.

Nor was the caution quite unreasonable. Their style and breeding
were totally unlike anything she had ever seen before. The tone of
familiarity they used towards each other was the very opposite to that
school of courtly distance which even the very nearest in blood or
kindred observed in her own country; and lastly, very few of those then
present understood anything of French; and my mother's English, at the
time I speak of, did not range beyond a few monosyllables, pronounced
with an accent that made them all but unintelligible.

"You'll have Kitty Dwyer to call upon you the moment she hears you 're
come," said Quin.

"Charmed to see her, if she 'll do us that honor," said my father,
laughing.

"You must have no common impudence, then, Watty," said another; "you
certainly jilted her."

"Nothing of the kind," replied my father; "she it was who refused me."

"Bother!" broke in an old squire, a certain Bob French of Frenchmount;
"Kitty refuse ten thousand a-year, and a good-looking fellow into the
bargain! Kitty's no fool; and she knows mankind just as well as she
knows horseflesh,--and, faix, that's not saying a trifle."

"How is she looking?" asked my father, rather anxious to change the
topic.

"Just as you saw her last. She hurt her back at an ugly fence in
Kennedy's park, last winter; but she's all right again, and riding the
little black mare that killed Morrissy, as neatly as ever!"

"She's a fine dashing girl!" said my father.

"No, but she's a good girl," said the old squire, who evidently admired
her greatly. "She rode eight miles of a dark night, three weeks ago, to
bring the doctor to old Hackett's wife, and it raining like a waterfall;
and she gave him two guineas for the job. Ay, faith, and maybe at the
same time, two guineas was two guineas to her."

"Why, Mat Dwyer is not so hard-up as that comes to?" exclaimed my
father.

"Is n't he, faith? I don't believe he knows where to lay his hand on a
fifty-pound note this morning. The truth is, Walter, Mat ran himself out
for _you_."

"For me! How do you mean for me?"

"Just because he thought you 'd marry Kitty. Oh! you need n't laugh.
There 's many more thought the same thing. You remember yourse