‘Ah! you see she is coming out of her shell at last,’ exclaimed May.  ’I saw you weren’t having a very good time of it when he took you down to dinner at Dungory Castle.  I wonder they were asked.  Fred told me that he had never heard of their having been there before.’

‘It is very difficult to make up a number sometimes,’ suggested Mrs. Gould; ’but they are certainly very coarse.  I hear, when Mr. Ryan and Mr. Lynch go to fairs, that they sleep with their herdsman, and in Mayo there is a bachelor’s house where they have fine times—­whiskey-drinking and dancing until three o’clock in the morning.’

‘And where do the ladies come from, May?’ asked Alice, for she now looked on the girl as an inexhaustible fund of information.

‘Plenty of ladies in the village,’ replied Mrs. Gould, rubbing her shins complacently; ’that’s what I used to hear of in my day, and I believe the custom isn’t even yet quite extinct.’

’And are there no other beaux in the county?  Does that exhaust the list?’

’Oh! no; but there’s something against them all.  There are a few landlords who live away, and of whom nobody knows anything.  Then there are some boys at school; but they are too young; there is Mr. Reed, the dispensary doctor.  Mr. Burke has only two hundred a year; but if his brother were to die he would be the Marquis of Kilcarney.  He’d be a great match then, in point of position; but I hear the estates are terribly encumbered.’

‘Has the present Marquis no children?’ said Alice.

‘He’s not married,’ said Mrs. Gould; ’he’s a confirmed old bachelor.  Just fancy, there’s twenty years between the brothers.  I remember, in old times, the present Marquis used to be the great beau at the Castle.  I don’t believe there was a girl in Dublin who didn’t have a try at him.  Then who else is there?  I suppose I daren’t mention the name of Mr. Fred Scully, or May will fly at me.’

’No, mother dear, I won’t fly at you; but what is the use of abusing Fred?—­we have known him all our lives.  If he has spent his money he has done no worse than a hundred other young men.  I know I can’t marry him, and I am not in love with him; but I must amuse myself with something.  I can’t sit here all day listening to you lamenting over the Land League; and, after a certain number of hours, conjecturing whether Mickey Moran will or will not pay his rent becomes monotonous.’

‘Now don’t vex me, May; for I won’t stand it,’ said Mrs. Gould, getting angry.  ’When you ask me for a new dress you don’t think of what you are saying now.  It was only the other day you were speaking to me of refurnishing this room.  I should like to know how that’s to be done if there was no one to look after Mickey Moran’s rent?’

The girls looked round the large, dull room.  Emaciated forms of narrow, antique sofas were seen dimly in the musty-smelling twilight.  Screens worked in red and green wools stood in the vicinity of the fireplace, the walls were lined with black pictures, and the floor, hidden in dark shadow and sunken in places, conveyed an instant idea of damp and mildew.