of the dressing-gown for the hereditary
pocket-handkerchief that went with it.

Sir Thomas paused in the act of cutting the end off a long cigar, and
said briefly:--

"Neither of you'll get her. She's going ploughing the Craughmore."

The youngest Miss Purcell knew as well as her sister Nora that the
latter had already commandeered the foxy mare, and, with the connivance
of the cowboy, had concealed her in the cow-house; but her sense of
tribal honour, stimulated by her sister's threatening eye, withheld her
from opening this branch of the subject.

"Well, but Johnny Mulcahy won't plough to-morrow because he's going to
the Donovan child's funeral. Tommy Brien's just told me so, and he'll be
drunk when he comes back, and to-morrow'll be the first day that Carnage
and Trumpeter are going out--"

The youngest Miss Purcell paused, and uttered a loud sob.

"My darling baby," remonstrated Lady Purcell from behind a reading-lamp,
"you really ought not to run about the stable-yard at this hour of the
night, or, indeed, at any other time!"

"Baby's always bothering to come out hunting," remarked an elder sister,
"and you know yourself, mamma, that the last time she came was when she
stole the postman's pony, and he had to run all the way to Drinagh, and
you said yourself she was to be kept in the next day for a punishment."

"How ready you are with your punishments! What is it to you if she goes
out or no?" demanded Sir Thomas, whose temper was always within easy
reach.

"She can have the cob, Tom," interposed stout and sympathetic Lady
Purcell, on whom the tears of her youngest born were having their wonted
effect, "I'll take the donkey chaise if I go out."

"The cob is it?" responded Sir Thomas, in the stalwart brogue in which
he usually expressed himself. "The cob has a leg on him as big as your
own since the last day one of them had him out!" The master of the
house looked round with exceeding disfavour on his eight good-looking
daughters. "However, I suppose it's as good to be hanged for a sheep as
a lamb, and if you don't want him--"

The youngest Miss Purcell swiftly returned her handkerchief to her
pocket, and left the room before any change of opinion was possible.

Mount Purcell was one of those households that deserve to be subsidised
by any country neighbourhood in consideration of their unfailing supply
of topics of conversation. Sir Thomas was a man of old family, of good
income and of sufficient edu