Mat rode home in great glee at the prospect of providing so well for one of his girls, and told them a man would be there the next morning to make choice of one of them for his wife. The girls, very naturally, inquired who the man was; to which Mat, in the plenitude of patriarchal power, replied, "that was nothing to them;" and his daughters had sufficient experience of his temper to know there was no use in asking more questions after such an answer. He only added, she would be "well off that should get him." Now, their father being such a curmudgeon, it is no wonder the girls were willing to take the chance of a good-humoured husband instead of an iron-handed father; so they set to work to make themselves as smart as possible for the approaching trial of their charms, and a battle royal ensued between the sisters as to the right and title to certain pieces of dress which were hitherto considered a sort of common property amongst them, and of which the occasion of a fair, or a pattern,[4] or market-day was enough to establish the possession, by whichever of the girls went to the public place; but now, when a husband was to be won, privilege of all sorts was pleaded, in which discussion there was more noise than sound reason, and so many violent measures to secure the envied _morceaux_, that some destruction of finery took place where there was none to spare; and, at last, seniority was agreed upon to decide the question; so that when Nance had the first plunder of the chest which held all their clothes in common, and Biddy made the second grab, poor Kitty had little left but her ordinary rags to appear in. But as, in the famous judgment on Ida's Mount, it is hinted that Venus carried the day by her scarcity of drapery, so did Kitty conquer by want of clothes: not that Love sat in judgment; it was Plutus turned the scale. But, to leave metaphor and classic illustration, and go back to Mat Riley's cabin--the girls were washing, and starching, and ironing all night, and the morning saw them arrayed for conquest. Flanagan came, and breakfasted, and saw the three girls. A flashy silk handkerchief which Nancy wore put her _hors de combat_ very soon; she was set down at once, in his mind, as extravagant. Biddy might have had a chance if she had made anything like a fair division with her youngest sister; but Kitty had been so plundered, that her shabbiness won an easy victory over the niggard's heart: he saw in her "the making of a thrifty wife;" besides which, she was possibly the best looking, and certainly the youngest of the three; and there is no knowing how far old Flanagan might have been influenced by those considerations. [4] A half-holy, half-merry meeting, held at some certain place, on the day dedicated to the saint who is supposed to be the PATRON of the spot--hence the name "PATTERN."