“How dar’ ye speak to me that way?” she cried.

Pat snorted:  “To be sure I’ve no right to say a word at all,” he returned, with wrathful irony.  “A poor fellow like meself has no call to have any feelin’s—­but ye might have knocked me down with a feather when I seen that strange chap with his arm about your waist.”

“Oh Pat!” gasped Elleney, and overcome with shame and woe, she burst into fresh tears, and buried her face in the unresponsive folds of a linsey-woolsey petticoat which dangled from a peg beside her.

Pat immediately melted.

“Amn’t I the terrible ould ruffian to go upsettin’ ye that way!” he groaned remorsefully.  “There now, Miss Elleney, don’t mind me.  I’m not meself to-day.  I’m a regular ould gomeril.  Sure it had to come sooner or later.  It’s meself knew very well I’d have to stan’ by and see ye carried off some fine day by whoever was lucky enough to get ye.  Some fellows has all the luck in this world, and maybe they’re no better nor others that hasn’t any luck at all.”

But Elleney scarcely heeded the latter part of this speech; it seemed to her she could never lift up her head again.  Pat knew—­Pat had seen!

“Oh dear,” she sobbed inarticulately, after a pause, “I think I’ll die with the shame of it.  I don’t know how I come to let him do it at all, but I didn’t rightly know—­I didn’t think—­an’—­an’ he said he was so fond of me an’ ’twas me he wanted for his wife.”

“Faith,” retorted Pat, “it’s himself’s the gentleman doesn’t let the grass grow under his feet—­an’ why would he?  Well, alanna,” he continued in an altered tone, “don’t be frettin’ yourself anyway.  Bedad, I wouldn’t blame—­”

“Ah, but I blame myself,” interrupted Elleney, wringing her poor little hands.  “I’ll—­I’ll never look up again afther the disgrace he’s afther puttin’ on me.  Sure ’twas all a mistake—­he thought I was one of the family, an’ when me a’nt tould him the way it is with me, he just tossed me away the same as an ould shoe.  I b’lieve he’s makin’ up to Juliana now.”

Pat emitted a kind of roar, but, before he could ventilate his feelings further, the door communicating with the house was quickly opened and Mr. Brian Brennan walked in.

“Are ye there, darlint?” he inquired, in a tone of melancholy tenderness; “I’m just come to tell ye the poor case I’m in—­”

“Then ye’ll be in a poorer case in something less than no time if ye don’t behave yourself, me brave young gentleman!” cried a choked voice in his ear, and almost before he could realise what was taking place, Brian Brennan found his six-foot length laid low upon the dusty shop floor, while his beautiful head of hair rolled aimlessly about amid a collection of boots and tin buckets.  Pat Rooney was sitting on his chest, his knees pinioning his arms, and clutching each of his broad shoulders with a vigorous hand.  He was not half the size of the prostrate giant, but love and fury lent him unnatural strength.  His flour-bedecked face worked convulsively, his eyes gleamed under their powdered lashes.