“Oh! av I iver live in that it’ll be partly my own, you know; and may-be a girl might do worse.”

“That’s thrue, dear,” said Matilda; “but John Dolan’s not so soft as to take any girl just as she stands.  What does your mother say about the money part of the business?”

And so the two friends put their heads together, to arrange another wedding, if possible.

Martin and Anty did not go to visit Switzerland, or Rome, as soon as they were married; but they took a bathing-lodge at Renvill, near Galway, and with much difficulty, persuaded Mrs Kelly to allow both her daughters to accompany them.  And very merry they all were.  Anty soon became a different creature from what she ever had been:  she learned to be happy and gay; to laugh and enjoy the sunshine of the world.  She had always been kind to others, and now she had round her those who were kind and affectionate to her.  Her manner of life was completely changed:  indeed, life itself was an altered thing to her.  It was so new to her to have friends; to be loved; to be one of a family who regarded and looked up to her.  She hardly knew herself in her new happiness.

They returned to Dunmore in the early autumn, and took up their residence at Sim Lynch’s big house, as had been arranged.  Martin was very shy about it:  it was long before he talked about it as his house, or his ground, or his farm; and it was long before he could find himself quite at home in his own parlour.

Many attempts were made to induce the widow to give up the inn, and shift her quarters to the big house, but in vain.  She declared that, ould as she was, she wouldn’t think of making herself throublesome to young folks; who, may-be, afther a bit, would a dail sooner have her room than her company:  that she had always been misthress, and mostly masther too, in her own house, glory be to God; and that she meant to be so still; and that, poor as the place was, she meant to call it her own.  She didn’t think herself at all fit company for people who lived in grand houses, and had their own demesnes, and gardens, and the rest of it; she had always lived where money was to be made, and she didn’t see the sense of going, in her old age, to a place where the only work would be how to spend it.  Some folks would find it was a dail asier to scatther it than it wor to put it together.  All this she said and a great deal more, which had her character not been known, would have led people to believe that her son was a spendthrift, and that he and Anty were commencing life in an expensive way, and without means.  But then, the widow Kelly was known, and her speeches were only taken at their value.

She so far relaxed, however, that she spent every Sunday at the house; on which occasions she invariably dressed herself with all the grandeur she was able to display, and passed the whole afternoon sitting on a sofa, with her hands before her, trying to look as became a lady enjoying herself in a fine drawing-room.  Her Sundays were certainly not the comfort to her, which they had been when spent at the inn; but they made her enjoy, with a keener relish, the feeling of perfect sovereignty when she returned to her own domains.