Without any of the original splendor of decorations, collation, and attire, with no one but the chaplain to marry them and the chief to bless them, Sheila O'Leary came into her own at last. As for Peter--he looked as Hennessy described him on the day the Brookses came home--"wi' one eye on the thruest lass God ever made an' the other on Paradise." AFTERWORD I thought I had to have a better ending to the story than the scraps of things I had made over from Leerie's letters and what Peter had told me. So I went to Hennessy. It was midwinter. I found him cracking the ice on the pond to let the swans in for a cold bath. "'Tis not docthor's ordthers," he grinned by way of explanation; "but they get so blitherin' uneasy there's no housin' them. That's the why I give them a bit of a cold nip onct the while--sure 'tis good threatment for us all--an' then they settle down." I huddled deeper into a fur coat and tried to agree with Hennessy. "Did ye see Leerie, then, since she came home?" "Have you?" He shirred his lips into an ecstatic pucker and whistled triumphantly. "Wasn't I always sayin' she'd marry the finest gentleman in the land, same as the King o' Ireland's only daughter, and go dandtherin' off to a fine home of her own?" "And she has." "She has that." "And so the story's told, Hennessy." "Told nothin'. Sure, it isn't half told--it isn't more than half begun, just." "But you can't end a book that way. You have to end with an ending." "'Tis the best way to end a book, then. Haven't ye taken the lass over the worst o' the road an' aren't ye leavin' her with the best ahead?" "But what is there left--to find along the way? She's found her work--that's over with. She's found her man--that's over with. She's found love--that's over--" Hennessy interrupted me almost viciously. I think he wanted to prod me instead of the ice. "What kind of talkin' is that for a person who thries to write books about real folk? Ye harken to me. Do ye think because love is found 'tis over with? Sure, Leerie's only caught a whiff of it yet--'tis naught but budded for her. By an' by there come the blossom of it an' the fruit of it. An' when death maybe withers it for a spell--'twill be but a winther-time promise to bud an' blossom again in the Counthry Beyond. There's no witherin' to love like hers. An' do ye think because she has her man found there's no pretty fancy or adventure still waitin' them along the way? An' do ye think Leerie's work will ever be done? Tell me that!" The shirr tightened into something like contempt. Hennessy looked down upon me with undisguised pity.