“If Hycy Burke was wild, Kathleen, so was many a good man before him; an’ that’s no raison but he may turn out well yet, an’ a credit to his name, as I have no doubt he will.  All that he did was only folly an’ indiscretion—­we can’t be too hard or uncharitable upon our fellow-craytures.”

“No,” chimed in her mother, “we can’t.  Doesn’t all the world know that a reformed rake makes a good husband?—­an’ besides, didn’t them two huzzies bring it on themselves?—­why didn’t they keep from him as they ought?  The fault, in such cases, is never all on one side.”

Kathleen’s brow and face and whole neck became crimson, as her mother, in the worst spirit of a low and degrading ambition, uttered the sentiments we have just written.  Hanna had been all this time sitting beside her, with one arm on her shoulder; but Kathleen, now turning round, laid her face on her sister’s bosom, and, with a pressure that indicated shame and bitterness of heart, she wept.  Hanna returned this melancholy and distressing caress in the same mournful spirit, and both wept together in silence.

Gerald Cavanagh was the first who felt something like shame at the rebuke conveyed by this tearful embrace of his pure-hearted and ingenuous daughters, and he said, addressing his wife:—­

“We’re wrong to defend him, or any one, for the evil he has done, bekaise it can’t be defended; but, in the mane time, every day will bring him more sense an’ experience, an’ he won’t repute this work; besides, a wife would settle him down.”

“But, father,” said Hanna, now speaking for the first time, “there’s one thing that strikes me in the business you’re talkin’ about, an’ it’s this—­how do you know whether Hycy Burke has any notion, good, bad, or indifferent, of marrying Kathleen?”

“Why,” replied her mother, “didn’t he write to her upon the subject?”

“Why, indeed, mother, it’s not an easy thing to answer that question,” replied Hanna.  “She sartinly resaved a letther from him, an’ indeed, I think,” she added, her animated face brightening into a smile, “that as the boys is gone to bed, we had as good read it.”

“No, Hanna, darling, don’t,” said Kathleen—­“I beg you won’t read it.”

“Well, but I beg I will,” she replied; “it’ll show them, at any rate, what kind of a reformation is likely to come over him.  I have it here in my pocket—­ay, this is it.  Now, father,” she proceeded, looking at the letter, “here is a letter, sent to my sister—­’To Miss Cavanagh,’ that’s what’s on the back of it—­and what do you think Hycy, the sportheen, asks her to do for him?”

“Why, I suppose,” replied her mother, “to run away wid him?”

“Na”

“Then to give her consent to marry him?” said her father.

“Both out,” replied Hanna; “no, indeed, but to lend him five-and-thirty pounds to buy a mare, called Crazy Jane, belonging to Tom Burton, of the Race Road!”

“’My Dear Bryan—­For heaven’s sake, in addition to your other generosities—­for-which I acknowledge myself still in your debt—­will you lend me thirty-five pounds, to secure a beautiful mare belonging to Tom Burton, of the Race Road?  She is a perfect creature, and will, if I am not quick, certainly slip through my fingers.  Jemmy, the gentleman’—­