She ceased to sing the songs that were their favourites. Her walks in the garden after breakfast, where her ready wit and genial pleasantry used to bring her a perfect troop of followers, were abandoned. The little projects of daily pleasure, hitherto her especial province, were changed for a calm subdued demeanour which, though devoid of all depression, wore the impress of a certain thoughtfulness and seriousness. No man was less observant than old Kearney, and yet even he saw the change at last, and asked Kate what it might mean. ‘She is not ill, I hope,’ said he, ‘or is our humdrum life too wearisome to her?’ ‘I do not suspect either,’ said Kate slowly. ‘I rather believe that as Mr. Walpole has paid her certain attentions, she has made the changes in her manner in deference to some wishes of his.’ ‘He wants her to be more English, perhaps,’ said he sarcastically. ‘Perhaps so.’ ‘Well, she is not born one of us, but she is like us all the same, and I’ll be sorely grieved if she’ll give up her light-heartedness and her pleasantry to win that Cockney.’ ‘I think she has won the Cockney already, sir.’ A long low whistle was his reply. At last he said, ‘I suppose it’s a very grand conquest, and what the world calls “an elegant match”; but may I never see Easter, if I wouldn’t rather she’d marry a fine dashing young fellow over six feet high, like O’Shea there, than one of your gold-chain-and-locket young gentlemen who smile where they ought to laugh, and pick their way through life as a man crosses a stream on stepping-stones.’ ‘Maybe she does not like Mr. O’Shea, sir.’ ‘And do you think she likes the other man? or is it anything else than one of those mercenary attachments that you young ladies understand better, far better, than the most worldly-minded father or mother of us all?’ ‘Mr. Walpole has not, I believe, any fortune, sir. There is nothing very dazzling in his position or his prospects.’ ‘No. Not amongst his own set, nor with his own people--he is small enough there, I grant you; but when he come down to ours, Kitty, we think him a grandee of Spain; and if he was married into the family, we’d get off all his noble relations by heart, and soon start talking of our aunt, Lady Such-a-one, and Lord Somebody else, that was our first-cousin, till our neighbours would nearly die out of pure spite. Sitting down in one’s poverty, and thinking over one’s grand relations, is for all the world like Paddy eating his potatoes, and pointing at the red-herring--even the look of what he dare not taste flavours his meal.’ ‘At least, sir, you have found an excuse for our conduct.’