get married, and that thereupon "the wife would put
her out of it." If she had only known, Ody was at this time, as for many
years ensuing, far too much taken up with himself, and Rory, and "the
little consarn away in the bog," to entertain any such project; but as
it was she felt that the event, with all its direful consequences,
perpetually hung over her, and might at any moment bring her new
prosperity to a miserable end. Her impending great-niece-in-law was a
vaguely appalling spectre, who threatened to take the roof from over her
head, and the bit out of her mouth, and turn her adrift to founder
hopelessly on the workhouse doorsteps. But it was not until more than a
year after their settlement at Lisconnel that she endued her bogey with
one definite form, by making up her mind that Ody "was thinkin' of
Theresa Joyce."

Her reason was that she had one fine evening seen him carrying Theresa's
water-pail for her down the hill, an ordinary act of courtesy enough,
but the sight of which suddenly darkened the world before her foolish
old eyes more dismally than if the golden fleece of the summer sunset
had been smothered under the blackest pall ever woven in cloud-looms.
"Fine colloguin' they're havin' together," she said to herself as she
watched them and their long shadows down the slope, "and he sloppin' the
half of it over the edge instead of mindin' what he's doin'. It's
throwin' me out on the side of the road she'll be." In reality Theresa
was wondering why there would be, a quare black sidimint like, in the
water on some days and not on others; and Ody was explaining the
phenomenon confidently and erroneously on an extemporised theory of his
own. But to old Moggy's fears it seemed quite possible that they might
be fixing the wedding-day. For Theresa Joyce herself she had no manner
of misliking at all, considering her to be "a very dacint plisant-spoken
little girl," but Mrs. Ody Rafferty seemed none the less certain to
evict her without remorse. And Ody's aunt retired to rest that night in
a despondent mood.

It was just about this time that Denis O'Meara came to stay at Lisconnel
on sick leave. The O'Mearas lived in one of the three cabins which used
to stand near the O'Beirne's forge, but which the great Famine and Fever
year left tenantless for ever after. Their household consisted of the
two infirm old people with their melancholy middle-aged son Tim, and
their sickly grandson, little Joe Egan, who was Denis'