“Ah but, mother, you know, she has been so frighted.”

“Frighted, indeed!  She’ll get over these tantrums, I hope, before Sunday next, or I know where I’ll wish her again.”

So Anty was left at home, and the rest of the family went to mass.  When the women returned, Meg manoeuvred greatly, and, in fine, successfully, that no one should enter the little parlour to interrupt the wooing she intended should take place there.  She had no difficulty with Jane, for she told her what her plans were; and though her less energetic sister did not quite agree in the wisdom of her designs, and pronounced an opinion that it would be “better to let things settle down a bit,” still she did not presume to run counter to Meg’s views; but Meg had some work to dispose of her mother.  It would not have answered at all, as Meg had very well learned herself, to caution her mother not to interrupt Martin in his love-making, for the widow had no charity for such follies.  She certainly expected her daughters to get married, and wished them to be well and speedily settled; but she watched anything like a flirtation on their part as closely as a cat does a mouse.  If any young man were in the house, she’d listen to the fall of his footsteps with the utmost care; and when she had reason to fear that there was anything like a lengthened tete-a-tete upstairs, she would steal on the pair, if possible, unawares, and interrupt, without the least reserve, any billing and cooing which might be going on, sending the delinquent daughter to her work, and giving a glower at the swain, which she expected might be sufficient to deter him from similar offences for some little time.

The girls, consequently, were taught to be on the alert—­to steal about on tiptoe, to elude their mother’s watchful ear, to have recourse to a thousand little methods of deceiving her, and to baffle her with her own weapons.  The mother, if she suspected that any prohibited frolic was likely to be carried on, at a late hour, would tell her daughters that she was going to bed, and would shut herself up for a couple of hours in her bed-room, and then steal out eavesdropping, peeping through key-holes and listening at door-handles; and the daughters, knowing their mother’s practice, would not come forth till the listening and peeping had been completed, and till they had ascertained, by some infallible means, that the old woman was between the sheets.

Each party knew the tricks of the other; and yet, taking it all in all, the widow got on very well with her children, and everybody said what a good mother she had been:  she was accustomed to use deceit, and was therefore not disgusted by it in others.  Whether the system of domestic manners which I have described is one likely to induce to sound restraint and good morals is a question which I will leave to be discussed by writers on educational points.

However Meg managed it, she did contrive that her mother should not go near the little parlour this Sunday morning, and Anty was left alone, to receive her lover’s visit.  I regret to say that he was long in paying it.  He loitered about the chapel gates before he came home; and seemed more than usually willing to talk to anyone about anything.  At last, however, just as Meg was getting furious, he entered the inn.