s Mrs.
Kearney who arranged everything.

Miss Devlin had become Mrs. Kearney out of spite. She had been educated
in a high-class convent, where she had learned French and music. As
she was naturally pale and unbending in manner she made few friends at
school. When she came to the age of marriage she was sent out to many
houses, where her playing and ivory manners were much admired. She sat
amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments, waiting for some suitor
to brave it and offer her a brilliant life. But the young men whom she
met were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement, trying to console
her romantic desires by eating a great deal of Turkish Delight in
secret. However, when she drew near the limit and her friends began
to loosen their tongues about her, she silenced them by marrying Mr.
Kearney, who was a bootmaker on Ormond Quay.

He was much older than she. His conversation, which was serious, took
place at intervals in his great brown beard. After the first year of
married life, Mrs. Kearney perceived that such a man would wear better
than a romantic person, but she never put her own romantic ideas away.
He was sober, thrifty and pious; he went to the altar every first
Friday, sometimes with her, oftener by himself. But she never weakened
in her religion and was a good wife to him. At some party in a strange
house when she lifted her eyebrow ever so slightly he stood up to take
his leave and, when his cough troubled him, she put the eider-down quilt
over his feet and made a strong rum punch. For his part, he was a model
father. By paying a small sum every week into a society, he ensured for
both his daughters a dowry of one hundred pounds each when they came to
the age of twenty-four. He sent the older daughter, Kathleen, to a good
convent, where she learned French and music, and afterward paid her
fees at the Academy. Every year in the month of July Mrs. Kearney found
occasion to say to some friend:

"My good man is packing us off to Skerries for a few weeks."

If it was not Skerries it was Howth or Greystones.

When the Irish Revival began to be appreciable Mrs. Kearney determined
to take advantage of her daughter's name and brought an Irish teacher to
the house. Kathleen and her sister sent Irish picture postcards to their
friends and these friends sent back other Irish picture postcards.
On special Sundays, when Mr. Kearney went with his family to the
pro-cathedral, a little crowd of people would