“Ah, Harry, that’s your grandfather all over; but, indeed, our family were full of strong antipathies and bitter resentments.  Why do you feel an antipathy against the girl?”

“Who can account for antipathies, mother?  I cannot account for this.”

“And perhaps on her part the poor girl is attached to you.”

“Well, but you have not answered my question.  How am I to act?  Which step should I take first—­the quietus, of ‘curds-and-whey,’ or the courtship?  The sooner matters come to a conclusion the better.  I wish, if possible, to know what is before me:  I cannot bear uncertainty in this or anything else.”

“I scarcely know how to advise you,” she replied; “both steps are of the deepest importance, but certainly which to take first is a necessary consideration.  I am of opinion that our best plan is simply to take a day or two to think it over, after which we will compare notes and come to a conclusion.”  And so it was determined.

We need scarcely assure our readers that honest and affectionate Barney Casey felt a deep interest in the recovery of the generous and kind-hearted Charles Lindsay, nor that he allowed a single day to pass without going, at least two or three times, to ascertain whether there was any appearance of his convalescence.  On the day following that on which Mrs. Lindsay had declared the future disposition of her property he went to see Charles as usual, when the latter, after having stated to him that he felt much better, and the fever abating, he said,—­

“Casey, I have rather strange news for you.”

“Be it good, bad, or indifferent, sir,” replied Barney, “you could tell me no news that would plaise me half so much as that there is a certainty of your gettin’ well again.”

“Well, I think there is, Barney.  I feel much better to-day than I have done for a long while—­but the news, are you not anxious to hear it?”

“Why, I hope I’ll hear it soon, Masther Charles, especially if it’s good; but if it’s not good I’m jack-indifferent about it.”

“It is good, Barney, to me at least, but not so to my brother Woodward.”

Barney’s ears, if possible, opened and expanded themselves on hearing this.  To him it was a double gratification:  first, because it was favorable to the invalid, to whom he was so sincerely attached; and secondly, because it was not so to Woodward, whom he detested.

“My mother yesterday told me that she has made up her mind to leave me all her property if I recover, instead of to Harry, for whom she had originally intended it.”

Barney, on hearing this intelligence, was commencing to dance an Irish jig to his own music, and would have done so were it not that the delicate state of the patient prevented him.

“Blood alive, Masther Charles!” he exclaimed, snapping his fingers in a kind of wild triumph, “what are you lying there for?  Bounce to your feet like a two-year ould.  O, holy Moses, and Melchisedek the divine, ay, and Solomon, the son of St. Pettier, in all his glory, but that is news!”