’Then it is this twenty pounds that is pinching you now?  Is that it?’

’You see my uncle said he would give me enough to keep me as a gentleman and his nephew, but not enough to keep all the family, as he said.  After my Christmas quarter I shall be up in the world again, and then there will be time to think of the woman you spoke of—­a Connaught woman, did you say?’

When Albinia reported this dialogue to her husband, he was much moved by this simple self-abnegation.

‘There is nothing for it,’ he said, ’but to bring him here till Christmas, and by that time we will take care that the new lodgings are cheap enough for him.  He must not be left to the mercy of old Goldsmith and his sister!’

Even Albinia was astonished, but Mr. Kendal carried out his intentions, and went in quest of his new friend; while no one thought of objecting except grandmamma.

‘I suppose, my dear,’ she said, ’that you know what Mr. Goldsmith means to do for this young man.’

‘I am sure I don’t,’ said Albinia.

’Really!  Ah! well, I’m an old woman, and I may be wrong, but my poor dear Mr. Meadows would never encourage a banker’s clerk about the house unless he knew what were his expectations.  Irish too!  If there was a thing Mr. Meadows disliked more than another, it was an Irishman!  He said they were all adventurers.’

However, Ulick’s first evening at Willow Lawn was on what he called ‘a headache day.’  He could not have taken a better measure for overcoming grandmamma’s objections.  Poor dear Mr. Meadows’ worldly wisdom was not sufficiently native to her to withstand the sight of anything so pale and suffering, especially as he did not rebel against answering her close examination, which concluded in her pronouncing these intermitting attacks to be agueish, and prescribing quinine.  To take medicines is an effectual way of gaining an old lady’s love.  Ulick was soon established in her mind as ’a very pretty behaved young gentleman.’

In the evenings, when Mr. Kendal read aloud, Ulick listened, and enjoyed it from the corner where he sheltered his eyes from the light.  He was told that he ought to go to bed quickly, but after the ladies were in their rooms, a long buzzing murmur was heard in the passage, and judicious peeping revealed the two gentlemen, each, candle in hand, the one with his back against the wall at the top of the stairs, the other leaning upon the balusters three steps below, and there they stayed, till the clock struck one, and Ulick’s candle burnt out.

‘What could you be talking about?’ asked the aggrieved Albinia.

‘Prometheus Vinctus,’ composedly returned Mr. Kendal.

Ulick’s eagerness in collecting every crumb of scholarship was a great bond of union; but there was still more in the bright, open, demonstrative nature of the youth, which had a great attraction for the reserved, serious Mr. Kendal, and scarcely a day had passed before they were on terms of intimacy, almost like an elder and younger brother.  Admitted into the family as a connexion, Ulick at once viewed the girls as cousins, and treated them with the same easy grace of good-natured familiarity as if they had been any of the nineteen Miss O’Mores around Ballymakilty.