Betty, who had known Ballingoole, and everyone in the neighbourhood, all her life, was quite at home in comparison with Mrs. Redmond and her daughter. She spent her holidays there, and looked forward to her visits to Noone, as if she were going direct to an earthly paradise. She loved the country, whether in summer or winter. She loved old “Playboy,” the bay hunter who had taught her to ride, and now lay buried at the end of the orchard. She was fond of the dogs, the cart horses, the very cows. She was also fond, in a way, of old Uncle Brian, with his goggle eyes, red face, and loud voice, but here her love was somewhat tempered by fear. He set her on horseback when she was seven years old, and flogged old “Playboy,” over big fences, in order to teach her to ride like an Irishwoman, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, when the chestnut filly kicked her off in the lawn, and went away with the best half of her habit. He took her out with him when he went snipe shooting, to make her active and hardy; nor dare she flinch, before the deepest, blackest bog-drain, and he taught her to play backgammon and cribbage, and swore at her roundly if she made a mistake. “To be afraid of nothing, to speak the truth, and to pull up her stockings,” were the injunctions which he enforced on his grand-niece. He left other matters to her instructors at the English school. When Betty was sixteen, her Uncle Brian died quite suddenly of apoplexy, said to have been induced by a fit of furious passion, and when she returned to Noone, her heart sank within her, for a new mistress was coming, and she expected great changes. The new mistress was an Englishwoman, with a pretty daughter, and both were total strangers to Ballingoole and Betty. Betty went mournfully round the place in her new black dress, accompanied by her intimate friends, “Brown,” “Jones,” and “Robinson.” There had been an auction of all the stock and out-door effects; the yard was full of straw, and bits of boxes and newspapers; the stables, byre, and coach house were empty; the house itself, how dreary and forlorn; at every turn she missed old Uncle Brian, with his loud voice and tapping stick, and was very miserable indeed, till Miss Dopping came that afternoon, and carried her away to her own home, and subsequently to visit the Moores of Roskeen. A week or two later, Mrs. Redmond arrived, inquisitive, astute, agreeable--prepared to tolerate Betty, and to tolerate the dogs--and to make a little money out of both! But Betty was a delightful surprise; a bright, clever, active girl, full of good humour and energy, who knew the ways of the place, and was most useful in the house, and took to Belle--and, what was more important, Belle took to her--immediately.