again? But you
shall not do that! No, you shall not'! As long as there's breath in my
body you shall not do it, and if you attempt. . . ."

In her wild excitement my mother had lifted one of her trembling hands
into Aunt Bridget's face while the other was still clasped about me,
when suddenly, with a look of fear on her face, she stopped speaking.
She had heard a heavy step on the stairs. It was my father. He entered
the room with his knotty forehead more compressed than usual and said:

"What's this she shall not do?"

My mother dropped back into her seat in silence, and Aunt Bridget,
wiping' her eyes on her black apron--she only wept when my father was
present--proceeded to explain.

It seems I am a hard-hearted woman with a bad disposition and though,
I've been up early and late and made myself a servant for seven years
I'm only in this house to turn my sister's child out of it. It seems
too, that we have no business--none of us have--to say what ought to be
done for this girl--her mother being the only person who has any rights
in the child, and if we attempt . . ."

"What's that?"

In his anger and impatience my father could listen no longer and in his
loud voice he said:

"Since when has a father lost control of his own daughter? He has to
provide for her, hasn't he? If she wants anything it's to him she has to
look for it, isn't it? That's the law I guess, eh? Always has been, all
the world over. Then what's all this hustling about?"

My mother made a feeble effort to answer him.

"I was only saying, Daniel . . ."

"You were saying something foolish and stupid. I reckon a man can do
what he likes with his own, can't he? If this girl is my child and I say
she is to go somewhere, she is to go." And saying this my father brought
down his thick hand with a thump on to a table.

It was the first time he had laid claim to me, and perhaps that acted on
my mother, as she said, submissively:

"Very well, dear. _You_ know best what is best for Mary, and if you
say--you and Bridget and . . . and Father Dan. . . ."

"I do say, and that's enough. So just go to work and fix up this Convent
scheme without future notice. And hark here, let me see for the future
if a man can't have peace from these two-cent trifles for his important
business."

My mother was crushed. Her lips moved again, but she said nothing aloud,
and my father turned on his heel, and left the room, shaking the floor
at every step under the w