‘The rudimentary idea,’ said Patrick.

‘That’s good for a beginning,’ said the captain; and he added:  ’Miss Mattock, I’m proud if one of my family can be reckoned worthy of assisting in your noble work.’

She replied:  ’I warn everybody that they shall be taken at their word if they volunteer their services.’

She was bidden to know by the captain that the word of an Irish gentleman was his bond.  ’And not later than to-morrow evening I’ll land him at your office.  Besides, he’ll find countrywomen of his among you, and there’s that to enliven him.  You say they work well, diligently, intelligently.’

She deliberated.  ’Yes, on the whole; when they take to their work.  Intelligently certainly compared with our English.  We do not get the best of them in London.  For that matter, we do not get the best of the English—­not the women of the north.  We have to put up with the rejected of other and better-paying departments of work.  It breaks my heart sometimes to see how near they are to doing well, but for such a little want of ballast.’

‘If they’re Irish,’ said Patrick, excited by the breaking of her heart, ‘a whisper of cajolery in season is often the secret.’

Captain Con backed him for diplomacy.  ’You’ll learn he has a head, Miss Mattock.’

‘I am myself naturally blunt, and prefer the straightforward method,’ said she.

Patrick nodded.  ’But where there’s an obstruction in the road, it’s permissible to turn a corner.’

’Take ’em in flank when you can’t break their centre,’ said Con.

’Well, you shall really try whether you can endure the work for a short time if you are in earnest,’ Miss Mattock addressed the volunteer.

‘But I am,’ he said.

‘We are too poor at present to refuse the smallest help.’

‘And mine is about the smallest.’

‘I did not mean that, Mr. O’Donnell.’

‘But you’ll have me?’

‘Gladly.’

Captain Con applauded the final words between them.  They had the genial ring, though she accepted the wrong young man for but a shadow of the right sort of engagement.

This being settled, by the sudden combination of enthusiastic Irish impulse and benevolent English scheming, she very considerately resigned herself to Mrs. Adister’s lead and submitted herself to a further jolting in the unprogressive conversational coach with Colonel Adister, whose fault as a driver was not in avoiding beaten ways, but whipping wooden horses.

Evidently those two were little adapted to make the journey of life together, though they were remarkably fine likenesses of a pair in the dead midway of the journey, Captain Con reflected, and he could have jumped at the thought of Patrick’s cleverness:  it was the one bright thing of the evening.  There was a clear gain in it somewhere.  And if there was none, Jane Mattock was a good soul worth saving.  Why not all the benefaction on our side, and a figo for rewards!  Devotees or adventurers, he was ready in imagination to see his cousins play the part of either, as the cross-roads offered, the heavens appeared to decree.  We turn to the right or the left, and this way we’re voluntary drudges, and that way we’re lucky dogs; it’s all according to the turn, the fate of it.  But never forget that old Ireland is weeping!