“Wait a while.  Sit to the fire there, and warm your shins.  You’re a good girl.  I’ll go and get on my shoes and stockings, and my cloak, and bonnet.  I must go up wid you myself, and ask yer misthress down, as she should be asked.  They’ll be telling lies on her ’av she don’t lave the house dacently, as she ought.”

“More power to you thin, Mrs Kelly, this blessed morning, for a kind good woman as you are, God bless you!” whimpered forth Biddy, who, now that she had obtained her request, began to cry, and to stuff the corner of her petticoat into her eyes.

“Whist, you fool—­whist,” said the widow.  “Go and get up Sally—­you know where she sleeps—­and tell her to put down a fire in the little parlour upstairs, and to get a cup of tay ready, and to have Miss Meg up.  Your misthress’ll be the better of a quiet sleep afther the night she’s had, and it’ll be betther for her jist popping into Miss Meg’s bed than getting between a pair of cowld sheets.”

These preparations met with Biddy’s entire approval, for she reiterated her blessings on the widow, as she went to announce all the news to Sally and Kate, while Mrs Kelly made such preparations as were fitting for a walk, at that early hour, up to Dunmore House.

They were not long before they were under weigh, but they did not reach the house quite so quickly as Biddy had left it.  Mrs Kelly had to pick her way in the half light, and observed that “she’d never been up to the house since old Simeon Lynch built it, and when the stones were laying for it, she didn’t think she ever would; but one never knowed what changes might happen in this world.”

They were soon in the house, for Judy was up to let them in; and though she stared when she saw Mrs Kelly, she merely curtsied, and said nothing.

The girl went upstairs first, with the candle, and Mrs Kelly followed, very gently, on tiptoe.  She need not have been so careful to avoid waking Barry, for, had a drove of oxen been driven upstairs, it would not have roused him.  However, up she crept,—­her thick shoes creaking on every stair,—­and stood outside the door, while Biddy went in to break the news of her arrival.

Anty was still asleep, but it did not take much to rouse her; and she trembled in her bed, when, on her asking what was the matter, Mrs Kelly popped her bonnet inside the door, and said,

“It’s only me, my dear.  Mrs Kelly, you know, from the inn,” and then she very cautiously insinuated the rest of her body into the room, as though she thought that Barry was asleep under the bed, and she was afraid of treading on one of his stray fingers.  “It’s only me, my dear.  Biddy’s been down to me, like a good girl; and I tell you what—­this is no place for you, just at present, Miss Anty; not till such time as things is settled a little.  So I’m thinking you’d betther be slipping down wid me to the inn there, before your brother’s up.  There’s nobody in it, not a sowl, only Meg, and Jane, and me, and we’ll make you snug enough between us, never fear.”