Mrs Kelly had, after her husband’s death, added a small grocer’s establishment to her inn.  People wondered where she had found the means of supplying her shop:  some said that old Mick Kelly must have had money when he died, though it was odd how a man who drank so much could ever have kept a shilling by him.  Others remarked how easy it was to get credit in these days, and expressed a hope that the wholesale dealer in Pill Lane might be none the worse.  However this might be, the widow Kelly kept her station firmly and constantly behind her counter, wore her weeds and her warm, black, stuff dress decently and becomingly, and never asked anything of anybody.

At the time of which we are writing, her two elder sons had left her, and gone forth to make their own way, and take the burden of the world on their own shoulders.  Martin still lived with his mother, though his farm lay four miles distant, on the road to Ballindine, and in another county—­for Dunmore is in County Galway, and the lands of Toneroe, as Martin’s farm was called, were in the County Mayo.  One of her three daughters had lately been married to a shop-keeper in Tuam, and rumour said that he had got L500 with her; and Pat Daly was not the man to have taken a wife for nothing.  The other two girls, Meg and Jane, still remained under their mother’s wing, and though it was to be presumed that they would soon fly abroad, with the same comfortable plumage which had enabled their sister to find so warm a nest, they were obliged, while sharing their mother’s home, to share also her labours, and were not allowed to be too proud to cut off pennyworths of tobacco, and mix dandies of punch for such of their customers as still preferred the indulgence of their throats to the blessing of Father Mathew.

Mrs. Kelly kept two ordinary in-door servants to assist in the work of the house; one, an antiquated female named Sally, who was more devoted to her tea-pot than ever was any bacchanalian to his glass.  Were there four different teas in the inn in one evening, she would have drained the pot after each, though she burst in the effort.  Sally was, in all, an honest woman, and certainly a religious one;—­she never neglected her devotional duties, confessed with most scrupulous accuracy the various peccadillos of which she might consider herself guilty; and it was thought, with reason, by those who knew her best, that all the extra prayers she said,—­and they were very many,—­were in atonement for commissions of continual petty larceny with regard to sugar.  On this subject did her old mistress quarrel with her, her young mistress ridicule her; of this sin did her fellow-servant accuse her; and, doubtless, for this sin did her Priest continually reprove her; but in vain.  Though she would not own it, there was always sugar in her pocket, and though she declared that she usually drank her tea unsweetened, those who had come upon her unawares had seen her extracting the pinches of moist brown saccharine from the huge slit in her petticoat, and could not believe her.