with the banker, to whom he remitted forty pounds, in what
way she could make the journey, since he was too broken in health himself
to go and fetch her. 'It is a bold step I am counselling you to take. It is
no light thing to quit a father's home, and I have my misgivings how far I
am a wise adviser in recommending it. There is, however, a present peril,
and I must try, if I can, to save you from it. Perhaps, in my old-world
notions, I attach to the thought of the stage ideas that you would
only smile at; but none of our race, so far as I know, fell to that
condition--nor must you while I have a roof to shelter you. If you would
write and say about what time I might expect you, I will try to meet you
on your landing in England at Dover. Kate sends you her warmest love, and
longs to see you.'

This was the whole of it. But a brief line to the bankers said that any
expense they judged needful to her safe convoy across Europe would be
gratefully repaid by him.

'Is it all right, dear? Have I forgotten anything?' asked he, as Kate read
it over.

'It's everything, papa--everything. And I _do_ long to see her.'

'I hope she's like Matty--if she's only like her poor mother, it will make
my heart young again to look at her.'

CHAPTER III

THE CHUMS

In that old square of Trinity College, Dublin, one side of which fronts
the Park, and in chambers on the ground-floor, an oak door bore the
names of 'Kearney and Atlee.' Kearney was the son of Lord Kilgobbin;
Atlee, his chum, the son of a Presbyterian minister in the north of
Ireland, had been four years in the university, but was still in his
freshman period, not from any deficiency of scholarlike ability to push
on, but that, as the poet of the _Seasons_ lay in bed, because he 'had
no motive for rising,' Joe Atlee felt that there need be no urgency
about taking a degree which, when he had got, he should be sorely
puzzled to know what to do with. He was a clever, ready-witted, but
capricious fellow, fond of pleasure, and self-indulgent to a degree that
ill suited his very smallest of fortunes, for his father was a poor man,
with a large family, and had already embarrassed himself heavily by the
cost of sending his eldest son to the university. Joe's changes of
purpose--for he had in succession abandoned law for medicine, medicine
for theology, and theology for civil engineering, and, finally, gave
them all up--had so outraged his father that he declared he would n