of their advertisements with the enthusiasm of her religious beliefs.  She was a doctrinaire farmer, and she applied to the garden, the farm and the poultry-yard, the same zeal and intensity that had made her in earlier days the backbone of committees, and the leading exponent of the godly activities of St. Matthew’s.  She was regarded by the heretofore rulers of these various provinces with a mixture of respect, contempt, and apprehension.  She was an incalculable force, with a predisposition towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded on theory, is abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin the steward, or Peter Flood the gardener, or, stiffest in her own conceit of all, Mrs. Twomey of the dairy.

“Master Larry’s coming home from Cluhir tomorrow, Mary,” Miss Coppinger announced, with satisfaction, to the peculiar confection of grey hair and black chenille net that represented the back of Mrs. Twomey’s head, her forehead being pressed against the side of the cow that she was milking.

“Thang-aade!” replied Mrs. Twomey fervently, expressing in this concise form her gratitude to her Creator for what she considered to be Larry’s release from a very vile durance “He’s long enough in it already!”

“The Doctor wouldn’t let me move him any sooner,” replied Miss Coppinger, apologetically.

“The divil doubt him, what a fool he’d be!” said Mrs. Twomey with a bitter laugh.  “Aren’t they all sayin’ as sure as gun is iron it’s what he wants that he’ll see his daughter in Coppinger’s Court before he dies!”

“What nonsense!” said Miss Coppinger, warmly; “I should like to know who is saying it!”

Mrs. Twomey, milking ceaselessly, slewed her head a little and looked at her employer out of the corner of an eye as bright and as cunning as a hen’s, and said:  “As rich as your Honour is, you couldn’t put a penny into the mouth of every man that’s sayin’ it!”

“I’m surprised at you, Mary,” said Frederica, indignantly, “You ought to have more sense than to repeat such rubbish!”

To this reproach, Mrs. Twomey responded with a long and jubilant crow of laughter.

“Yerra, gerr’l alive—!” she corrected herself quickly.  “My lady alive, I should say—­sure a little thing like me’d tell lies as fast as a hen’d pick peas!”

The modesty, as well as the accuracy, of this statement silenced Miss Coppinger for a moment.

“Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” she resumed with much severity.  “It is amazing to me how a decent, respectable little woman like you can not only tell lies, but boast of it!”

“Ah ha!  I’m the same owld three and fourpince, an’ will be till I die!” triumphed Mrs. Twomey, with another screech of laughter, removing her tiny person, her milk-pail, and her stool from under the cow.  “An’ I won’t be long dyin’!” another screech; “an’ it won’t take many to carry me to Cunnock-a-Ceoil Churchyard!”

A final and prolonged burst of mirth succeeded this announcement, during which the unrepentant Three and Fourpence swung the pail on to the hook of the swinging-balance for weighing the milk that was Miss Coppinger’s latest and most detested innovation.