“We’ll have to be gettin’ ready to be off soon, I suppose?” pursued Mary, still in a tone of vexed inquiry.

“Aye,” said Dan, continuing to rub his knees.

“Ye ought to be out o’ yer wits wid delight,” asserted Mrs. Brophy angrily.

“So I am,” said Dan, with a ghastly attempt at cheerfulness.

“Ah, go ‘long out o’ that!” cried Mary.  “Ye have me moithered, sittin’ there starin’ the two eyes out o’ yer head.  Go out an’ give the hens a bit to ate.”

“Sure we haven’t had our own suppers yet,” returned Dan, slowly rising; “time enough to give the cratur’s what’s left.”

“Listen to the man!  ‘Pon me word, ye’d never desarve a bit o’ good look, Dan Brophy, ye’ve that little sense.  What call have we to go pinchin’ an’ scrapin’ now, will ye tell me?  Us that’s goin’ to spend the rest of our days in peace an’ comfort.  Sure, Larry’ll let us want for nothin’ while we live.”

“Aye, indeed,” returned her husband; “I was forgettin’ that.”

He went out obediently, and presently his voice was heard dolorously “chuck-chucking” to the hens.  When he re-entered he sat down on the stool again, with the same puzzled air which had formerly irritated his wife.

“I wonder,” he said, “how in the world we’ll be managin’.  Will I go down to the station beyant, an’ give them that money ordher, an’ tell them Larry bid them give us tickets to America for it, or will I have to take it to the post-office first?  Mrs. Murphy said it was a post-office ordher, but sure they wouldn’t be givin’ us tickets for America at the post-office.”

“Ah, what a gom ye are!” said Mary.  It was her favourite and wholly untranslatable term of opprobrium.

“Afther that,” as Dan invariably said, “there was no use in talkin’ to Mary.”  He suspected that on this occasion she was feeling a little puzzled herself, but wisely resolved to postpone the discussion till she should be in a better humour.

Next morning, when the old man rose and went out of the house, as usual, to fetch a pailful of water from the stream which ran at the foot of the hill, he cast lingering glances about him.  It would be a queer thing, he thought, to look out in the morning on any other view than this familiar one, which had greeted his waking eyes in his far away childhood, and on which he had expected to look his last only when the day came whereon he should close them for ever.  On the other side of the rugged brown shoulder of that hill was the little chapel, under the shadow of which he had hoped one day to be laid to rest.  Pausing, pail in hand, he began to wonder to himself where he would have had the monument which, if he and Mary had already departed, was, by Larry’s request, to have surmounted their remains.  There was an empty space to the right of the gate—­it would have looked well there—­real handsome, Dan opined.  With his mind full of this thought he returned to Mary, and immediately imparted it to her.