herself to
Cunnock-a-Ceoil. (A cryptic phrase signifying that though she
recognised, humorously, her own unworthiness, she still attached
sufficient importance to her person to wish to bestow it upon the
place of her birth.) Not long after her return and restoration to
health, the episode of her marriage had occurred, and she had settled
down into the soil of Ireland again, with, possibly, a slightly
increased freedom of manner, but, saving this, with no more token on
her of her dash into the new world, than has the little fish that lies
and pants on the river bank for a moment, before the angler
contemptuously chucks him into the stream again.

Michael and Mary Twomey had been on the staff of Coppinger's Court for
a full thirty years when, in the fullness of time, Frederica returned
to her ancient home, bringing with her the young heir to it, and all
its accessory tenanted lands. Not Green Dragon or The Norreys
King-at-Arms, or any other pontiff of pedigrees, could attach a higher
importance to gentle blood than did little elderly Mary Twomey,
elderly, but still as indomitably nimble and resolute as when in
Frederica's childhood she would catch the donkey for her, and run
after it, belabouring it in its rider's interest, for half an
afternoon.

In spite of the fact that Miss Coppinger's youth had been spent,
chiefly, in a town, the love of the country, ingrained during her
first years, was merely dormant, and it revived with her return to
Coppinger's Court. The garden, the farm, the hens, the cattle, the
dairy, were all interests to which she returned with that renewal of
early passion, that has in it the fervour of youth as well as the
depth of maturity. She read agricultural papers insatiably, and
believed all that she read, accepting the verbal inspiration of their
advertisements with the enthusiasm of her religious beliefs. She was a
doctrinaire farmer, and she applied to the garden, the farm and the
poultry-yard, the same zeal and intensity that had made her in earlier
days the backbone of committees, and the leading exponent of the godly
activities of St. Matthew's. She was regarded by the heretofore rulers
of these various provinces with a mixture of respect, contempt, and
apprehension. She was an incalculable force, with a predisposition
towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded on theory, is
abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin the steward, or Peter Flood the
gardener, or, stiffest in her own co