“‘And look at the clothes of him!’ sings out Margaret, reverentlike.  ’And is that your tall hat, Mike?  To think of you with a tall hat!  Sure it’s a proud girl I am this day.  Saints forgive me, I’ve forgot Archie!’

“And afore we could stop her she’d run into the hall and unfastened the libr’ry door.  It took her some time to smooth down the young one’s sensitive feelin’s, and while she was gone, me and Simeon told the O’Shaughnessy man a little of what his girl had had to put up with along of Cousin Harriet and Archibald.  He was mad.

“‘Is that the little blackguard?’ he asks, pointin’ to Archibald, who had arrived by now.

“‘That’s the one,’ says I.

“Archibald looked up at him and grinned, sassy as ever.

“‘Father McGrath,’ asks O’Shaughnessy, determined like, ’can you marry us this night?’

“‘I can,’ says the Father.

“‘And will yez?’

“‘I will, with pleasure.’

“‘Maggie,’ says Mike, ’get your hat and jacket on and come with the Father and me this minute.  These gintlemen here will explain to your lady when she comes back.  But you’ll come back no more.  We’ll send for your trunk to-morrer.’

“Even then the girl hesitated.  She’d been so used to bein’ a slave that I suppose she couldn’t realize she was free at last.

“‘But, Mike, dear,’ she says.  ’I—­oh, your lovely hat!  Put it down, Archie, darlin’.  Put it down!’

“Archibald had been doin’ a little cruisin’ on his own hook, and he’d dug up Mike’s shiny beaver where it had been dropped in the hall.  Now he was dancin’ round with it, bangin’ it on the top as if it was a drum.

“‘Put it down, please!’ pleads Margaret.  ’Twas plain that that plug was a crown of glory to her.

“‘Drop it, you little thafe!’ yells O’Shaughnessy, makin’ a dive for the boy.

“‘I won’t!’ screams Archibald, and starts to run.  He tripped over the corner of a mat, and fell flat.  The plug hat was underneath him, and it fell flat, too.

“‘Oh! oh! oh!’ wails Margaret, wringin’ her hands.  ’Your beautiful hat, Mike!’

“Mike’s face was like a sunset.

“‘Your reverence,’ says he, ’tell me this; don’t the wife promise to “obey” in the marriage service?’

“‘She does,’ says Father McGrath.

“’D’ye hear that, you that’s to be Margaret O’Shaughnessy?  You do?  Well, then, as your husband that’s to be in tin minutes, I order you to give that small divil what’s comin’ to him.  D’ye hear me?  Will yez obey me, or will yez not?’

“She didn’t know what to do.  You could see she wanted to—­her fingers was itchin’ to do it, but—­And then Archie held up the ruins of the hat and commenced to laugh.

“That settled it.  Next minute he was across her knee and gettin’ what he’d been sufferin’ for ever sence he was born; and gettin’ all the back numbers along with it, too.