Mary Magovern kept a drinking-shop behind the living-rooms of her cottage, and the immense prestige she had in The Lane must have had some foundation in the power which this thriving business gave her, many of her neighbors being under the obligation of debt to her.

Mike Quinlan would have been her most frequent visitor had it not been for the ever-open eye of Mrs. Quinlan, which caused her husband to seek his delights by stealth at a village a mile away.  Mike was an elderly and handsome man, but his wits had ebbed out as the contents of the wine-cup flowed in, and the beauty that had won so remarkable a person as Mrs. Quinlan in its first glow was somewhat marred.  He was the owner of a small cart and a mule, and those who had stones or earth to move usually remembered to employ poor Mike.  But it was on foot, as a more inconspicuous method of eluding the watchfulness of Mrs. Quinlan, that Mike slipped away to the neighboring village of an afternoon, and it was on foot that I one night saw Mrs. Quinlan going over the same road with an invincible determination in her countenance and a small birch rod in her hand.  Mrs. Quinlan was somewhat younger than her lord and master:  she had a clear, bright-blue eye, a roseate color in her little slender face, and gray hair tidily smoothed back beneath the dainty ruffles of her cap, about which a black ribbon was tied.  She wore short petticoats and low shoes, and as she walked briskly along she smoothed her apron with the disengaged hand, as if, the balance of the family respectability having so wholly fallen upon her own shoulders, she would not disturb it by permitting a disorderly wrinkle.  Half an hour later she passed again over the road, her face turned homeward and wearing an even greater austerity, the birch rod grasped firmly in her hand, and her worser half preceding her with a foolish smile upon his lips, half of concession, half of pride in the power to which he stooped.

Another of Mrs. Magovern’s occasional visitors was Old Haley, who had regular employment upon our own place.  Like Mike Quinlan, he rejoiced in a wife who was an ornament to her sex—­a most respectable, handsome and intelligent woman, though education had done little to sharpen her wits or widen her experience.  She could tell a one from a five dollar bill, as her husband would proudly inform you, and she could cook a dinner, do up a skirt or a frilled cap, keep a house or tend a sick friend, as well as any woman in the land.  “Maggie’s a janeous!” her husband would remark with a look of intense admiration.

One evening Mrs. Haley made her appearance at our house, asking for an audience of my mother.  The object was to inform her—­these sympathetic people like to be advised in all their affairs—­that being in need of various household supplies she proposed on the following day to go to the city and purchase them at the Washington Market.

“I suppose you have been to the city before, Mrs. Haley?” remarked my mother.