returned to his toasting fork; "if
a dog done anything for her she'd look at it the same. If she wasn't
the mistress's niece itself, ye might whistle for her, Pat, me boy."

Meanwhile Elleney had gone staggering along the passage with her heavy
tray, and now bumped it against the parlour door as an intimation that
she would like some one to open it.

This unspoken request was acceded to so suddenly that she almost fell
forward into the room.

"I was waitin' on the eggs," she explained hurriedly, as she recovered
her balance and tottered forward with her burden; "but here they are
for yous now, and the tea is wet this good bit, an' the toast is very
near ready."

The room was full of women; no less than eight of them sat expectantly
round the empty board. Besides Mrs. McNally herself and her four
daughters, three nieces had been added to her family on the death of
their mother, Mrs. McNally's only sister.

"Sure they're all the same as me own," the good woman was wont to say,
looking round affectionately at the girls. "There's times when I have
to be thinkin' which is which--upon me honour, there is." And
thereupon she would roll her broad shoulders, and wink with both eyes
together after her own good-natured fashion; and no one who lived in
the house with her could doubt that she spoke the truth.

Elleney had only recently been added to the group; she spoke of the
head of the house as "me a'nt," but she was in truth no relation to
the kindly soul who had taken compassion on her destitute condition,
being a niece of the late Mr. McNally's first wife. Perhaps no other
woman in the world would thus have admitted her to a circle already
somewhat inconveniently large; but, as Mrs. McNally said, "One more or
less didn't make much differ, an' sure the Lord 'ud be apt to make it
up to her, an' Elleney was a useful little girl, a great hand at her
needle, an' with a wonderful turn for business, God bless her."

Mrs. McNally invariably alluded to the odd little house where her many
avocations were carried on as her "establishment," and spoke
habitually of "the business." It would have been hard to define the
precise nature of this business. There was a bakery attached to it,
over which Pat Rooney presided, driving round the country each
afternoon with the results of his labours. Juliana and Henrietta
McNally sold groceries at one counter, and Matilda and Maria sold
calico and flannel and boots at another. Hams and stockin