“Well, I can soon march,” said Pat, in a slightly offended tone, and turning even a deeper red than before.  “I’ll be off out o’ this in a minute.”

“Sure ye’re not angry with me, Pat?” said Elleney timidly, as she followed him to the door.  “I’m very grateful for all ye done for me.”

“To be sure you are,” said Rooney, without turning his head, and in another moment the house door slammed behind him.

Elleney returned somewhat mournfully to the parlour, there to find the whole family in a state of violent excitement.

Mrs. McNally had just received a letter, which she was clutching fast with both fat hands; while the seven girls were simultaneously endeavouring to read its contents over her broad shoulders.

“If yez ’ull sit down like good children,” she exclaimed, as Elleney entered, “I’ll read it all out—­every word.  An’ yez ’ull all know as soon as meself.  But ye have me distracted entirely, tormentin’ me the way ye’re doin’ now.  Musha! did anybody ever see such a scrawl as the man writes?”

“Sure, I can see it plain enough from here,” cried Juliana, and with a sudden deft movement she twitched the document out of her mother’s hands.  “I’ll read it, m’mah, in half the time you do be thinkin’ about it.”

“Very well, me dear, very well,” agreed Mrs. McNally resignedly.  “Ye have the best right, afther all.  It concerns you more nor me.”

Juliana smoothed out the paper, and began to read in a high-pitched monotonous voice, and without any regard to punctuation, of which, indeed, in all probability, the letter was devoid.

“’Dear Mrs. McNally,—­I write these few lines hoping you are quite well as I am at present thank God it’s a long time since we come across each other but I haven’t forgot the old times and I am sure yourself is the same I did be hearin’ a while ago about the fine family of daughters you have God bless them and how well you prospered in business dear Mrs. McNally I have one son a fine young man that I do be anxious to settle in life—­’

“Look at that now!” put in Mrs. McNally jocularly.  “Didn’t I say the letter was more for you than for me, girls?”

“Whisht! can’t you whisht?” put in Henrietta eagerly.  “Go on, Ju!”

“‘Settle in life,’ resumed Ju.  ‘The farm is doin’ finely for me thanks be to God though I’m not able to stock it as well as I’d like these bad times.’  He’s lookin’ out for a bit o’ money, ye see, m’mah?”

“To be sure he is,” responded her mother comfortably.  “Trust Tim Brennan to be lookin’ out for that.  An’ why wouldn’t he, the poor ould fellow?  Dear knows, it’s hard set the most o’ the farmers is to live at all.  He’s a cute ould schemer, Tim is, though.”

“‘There’s not one o’ the girls in these parts I’d let him take up with at all,’ went on the reader, ’but it come to me mind that if you was willin’ we might make up a match between himself an’ one o’ your fine young daughters—­’