“What in the name o’ goodness is this?” she asked.  “There’s print on this.  I hope to heaven it’s not a summons, or a notice to quit, or anything that way.”

“Not at all, not at all,” cried Peggy Murphy, “that’s an ordher for money.  I knew the looks of it the minute I set eyes on it—­the very same as wan that Mrs. O’More sent me from Dublin, the price of a pair o’ chickens she sent for, afther she went up.  Bedad, you’re in luck, Dan.  How much is it for, now, Maggie?”

“Ah! good gracious! don’t be axin’ the child them things.  Sure how in the world could she tell, an’ it afther bein’ written in America?—­God bless us! let her have a look at the letther anyhow.”

“‘My dear uncle and aunt,’” began Maggie, slowly spelling out.

[Illustration:  THE FLITTING OF THE OLD FOLKS “My dear Uncle and Aunt,” began Maggie]

Mrs. Brophy uttered a shrill scream, and clapped her hands together.  “It’s from Larry!  Lord bless an’ save us! it’s Larry himself, him that I thought in his grave this fifteen year!  God bless us, it’s dramin’ I am—­it can’t be true!  Dan, d’ye hear that?  Good gracious, what’s the man thinkin’ of, stan’in’ there, lookin’ about him, the same as if he never heard a thing at all. Dan” (with an impatient tug at his sleeve), “d’ye hear what I’m tellin’ you?  Larry isn’t dead at all, an’ he’s afther writin’ to us from America.”

“Well, to be sure,” cried Mrs. Kinsella.  “Your sister’s son, wasn’t he, ma’am?  La’rence Kearney.  A fine young fellow he was, too.  He went an’ listed on yez, didn’t he?”

“Aye, an’ she was near breakin’ her heart when he done it,” chimed in Peggy Murphy; “sure, I remember it well.”

Several other bystanders remembered it too, and expressed their sympathy by divers nods and groans; old Dan at last impatiently throwing out his hands for silence.

“Whisht! whisht! we can’t be sure whether himself’s in it at all yet.  Let the poor little girl be gettin’ on wid the letther, can’t yez?  Sure maybe it isn’t Larry at all.”

“Listen to the man, an’ him the only nephew that ever we had,” began “herself” shrilly; but Maggie’s childish pipe, proceeding with the reading, drowned the rest of her remonstrance.

“’I hope you are quite well, as this leaves me at present.  You will be very much astonished to get this letter, but when we meet, as I trust we soon shall, I hope to have the pleasure of explainin’ to you all that has befell me since I left yous an’ my happy home to join her Majesty’s corpse!’”

“What’s that?” cried Dan in alarm.  “Corpse!  Didn’t I tell yez he was dead?”

“Sure how could he be dead,” put in Mrs. Brophy, “when it was himself that wrote the letther?  There isn’t anythin’ about a corpse in it, Maggie asthore, is there?”

“‘C-o-r-p-s,’ spelled out Maggie, “corpse; yes, there it is, as plain as print.”

“Sure he manes ‘rig’ment,’ “shouted out some well-informed person from the background. “‘Corpse’—­that’s what they do be callin’ the army.”