Connemara could not help laughing as she looked at her brother's earnest face. "'Tis plain that you know the history of the city," she said, "but your stories are all about wars. To-morrow is market-day. Ask Kathleen to go with you down through the city streets to see the old peddler women in their bright shawls, selling their wares in the little booths and tents. That will be a strange sight to the child, after lonely Donegal; and she'll like it better than battles." After supper that night she took Kathleen within the cosy shelter of her arms and talked with her about little Mary Ellen and her life in Tonroe. "She's like Victoria," said Kathleen, "gentle and loving. I wish she could be here instead of me. She used to wish that whole troops of boys and girls would come over the bare Donegal hills to play with us." But when, on the next afternoon, Columba took her in the donkey-trap and drove in and out among the streets of Kilkenny, she almost forgot Tonroe and the little sister. They went first to the market, and Kathleen spent one of the precious shillings she had earned stacking peat to buy a string of pink beads to send to Mary Ellen. Then they drove past the Cathedral and down to the Castle, and came home along the bank of the River Nore, which is one of the prettiest rivers in all Ireland. "Sure, you are the fine driver," Kathleen said admiringly to Columba, as he sent the little donkey along at a rattling pace behind a jaunting-car filled with tourists. And of the two it would have been hard to tell which was the happier that day,—Kathleen, whirling along the beautiful tree-shaded river seeing the city, or Columba, showing to her admiring eyes how much at home he was among such grand sights. CHAPTER XIII KATHLEEN'S COMPOSITION "Oh, Deena Malone, ye've a wonderful way with ye, All the young childer are wild for to play with ye!" Captain Conn sang, as she led little Victoria, all freshly dressed for supper, to the group near the piano. Deena made a deep bow to her, as he kept up his part of the jig in the three-hand reel, while Hannah and Anna, who were dancing with him, called "Faster, faster!" to Moira, who was playing on the piano. The street door banged, and Columba dashed into the house, shouting, "Danny won the hundred-yard dash,—Danny won! Hooray!" Immediately the reel became a breakdown, and when Danny entered the room, followed by Tara and Uncle Tom, everyone fell upon him, eager to give him a rousing whack of good-will. The supper bell sounded above the din, and out into the dining-room tumbled the twelve, singing at the top of their lungs, "For lightness of foot there was not his peer;"—and clasping hands in a great circle, they danced round and round the table before taking their places. The only one to keep her hair unruffled through the performance was Princess Feena. No matter how often the young Malones ended a reel in "all hands around," she looked as royally calm at the end as at the beginning.