rls. We don't want any more. Send her to the Union.'

'How can we send her?'

'Let the rascally Irish manage that, 'tis no affair of mine; but if you
bother me any more, I vow I'll take a whip and drive 'em, girl and all,
off the premises.'

'Very well, David,' said Mrs Prothero, submissively, and with a heavy
sigh: 'but if the girl should die?'

She walked across to the door, paused on the threshold, and glanced
back; but there was no change in the rubicund face. She went into the
passage, and slowly closed the door, holding the handle in her hand for
a few seconds as she did so. She walked deliberately down the passage,
pausing at each step. Before she was at the end of it, a loud voice
reached her ear. She joyfully turned back and re-entered the bedroom.

'Yes, David?' she said quietly.

'If the girl is really bad, send her in the cart, or let her have a
horse, if you like,' growled Mr Prothero. 'Only I do wish, mother, you
would have nothing to do with them Irishers.'

'Thank you, my dear,' said the quiet little woman. 'Then if the rest go
away, I may manage about the girl?'

'Do what you like, only get rid of 'em somehow.'

'Thank you.'

'Oh, you needn't thank me! I'd as soon send every one of 'em to jail as
not; but I can't stand your puffing and sighing just as if they were all
your own flesh and blood.'

'We're all the same flesh and blood, my dear.'

'I'd be uncommon sorry to think so. I've nothing but Welsh flesh and
blood about me, and should be loath to have any other, Irish, Scotch, or
English either.'

Mrs Prothero disappeared.

'That 'ooman 'ould wheedle the stone out of a mill,' continued the
farmer, rubbing his eyes, and deliberately taking off his night-cap,
'and yet she don't ever seem to have her own way, and is as meek as
Moses. She has wheedled me out of my Sunday nap, so I suppose I may as
well get up. Hang the Irish! There is no getting rid of 'em. She's given
'em a night's lodging, and a supper for so many years, that they come
and ask as if it was their due. But I'll put a stop to it, yet, in spite
of her, or my name isn't David Prothero.'

When Mr Prothero came forth from his dormitory, he was in his very best
Sunday attire. As he walked across the farm-yard in search of his wife,
there was an air about him that seemed to say, 'I am monarch of all I
survey.' Indeed, few monarchs are as independent, and proud of their
independence, as David Prothero of Glanyravon.

He was a