t
ye give her up. If you give her up, and she, poor child, on the other
sides of the water, I'll never respict ye--d'ye hear that, now, Andy?
Only the last letter she wrote she said she'd break her heart if I let
you fall in love with anybody else. The men's all fools now, anyhow,
Andy, and some of them is bad, but don't you go and desave that child,
that's a-breakin' her heart afther you. And don't ye believe as I ever
keered a straw for ye, for I don't keer fer you, nor no other man
a-livin'."

Andy stood still for some moments, trying in a dumb way to think what
to do or say; then he helplessly opened the door and went out.

III.

The next Thursday evening Andy did not come, and Margaret felt sorry,
she could not tell why. But Sylvia came down into the lower hall,
peered through the glass of the kitchen door, and, finding the maid
sitting alone by the range, entered as of old. And to her Maggie Byrne,
sore pressed for sympathy, told of her last talk with the comely young
man.

"You see, miss, it would be too mean for me to take Dora's b'y away
from her, fer he's the finest-lookin' and altogether the nicest young
man anywhere about Drogheda; and Dora, she's always used to havin' the
best of everything, and she always took anything that was mine,
thinkin' she'd a right to it, and, bein' a weak and purty young thing,
I s'pose she had, now, miss."

"I think she's mean, Maggie, and you're foolish if you don't take your
own lover back again."

"And she on the other sides of the say, miss? And my own little sister
that I packed around in me arms? She's full of tricks, but then she's
purty, and she's always been used to havin' my things. At any rate,
'tain't meself as'll be takin' away what's hers, and she's trusted him
to me, and she's away on the other sides of the water. At least not if
I can help it, miss. And I pray fer help all the time. Besides, do you
think I'd have Andy Doyle afther what's happened, even if Dora was out
of the way?"

"I know you would," said Sylvia.

"I believe I would, miss, I'm such a fool. But then sometimes I despise
him. If it wasn't fer me dear old mother, that maybe I'll never see
again," and Maggie wiped her eyes with her apron, "I'd join the
Sisters. I think maybe I have got a vocation, as they call it."

It was the very next evening after this interview that Bridget Monahan,
the downstairs girl, gave Margaret a little advice.

"He's a foine young feller, now, Mag, but don't