"Not likely! Pegs above _him_. Well, I'll tell you. It's that fellow that's spoons on you,"--with all a brother's perspicacity,--"the fellow who saw us on the hay-cart,"--Monica writhes inwardly,--"Desmond, you know!" "The enemy's nephew?" asks Kit, in a thrilling tone, that bespeaks delight and a malicious expectation of breakers ahead. "Yes. I was talking to him yesterday, early in the day, at Madam O'Connor's; and he asked me was I your brother, Monica, to which I pleaded guilty, though," with a grin, "I'd have got out of it if I could; and then he began to talk about shooting, and said I might knock over any rabbits I liked in Coole. I told him I had no gun, so he offered to lend me one. I thought it was awfully jolly of him, considering I was an utter stranger, and that; but he looks a real good sort. He sent over the gun this morning by a boy, and I have had it hidden in the stable until now. I thought I'd never get out of that beastly garden this evening." "Oh, Terence, you shouldn't have taken the gun from him," says Monica, flushing. "Just think what Aunt Priscilla would say if she heard of it. You know how determined she is that we shall have no intercourse with the Desmonds." "Stuff and nonsense!" says Mr. Beresford. "I never heard such a row as they are forever making about simply _nothing_. Why, it's quite a common thing to jilt a girl, nowadays. I'd do it myself in a minute." "You won't have time," says Kit, contemptuously. "She--whoever she may be--will be sure to jilt _you_ first." "Look here," says Terence, eyeing his younger sister with much disfavor; "you're getting so precious sharp, you know, that I should think there'll be a conflagration on the Liffey before long; and I should think, too, that an outraged nation would be sure to fling the cause of it into the flames. So take care." "Terence, you ought to send that gun back _at once_," says Monica. "Perhaps I ought, but certainly I shan't," says Terence, genially. "And if I were you," politely, "I wouldn't make an ass of myself. There is quite enough of that sort of thing going on up there," indicating, by a wave of his hand, the drawing-room at Moyne, where the Misses Blake are at present dozing. "You shouldn't speak of them like that," says Monica; "it is very ungrateful of you, when you know how kind they are, and how fond of you." "Well, I'm fond of them, too," says Terence, remorsefully but gloomily; "and I'd be even fonder if they would only leave me alone. But they keep such a look-out on a fellow that sometimes I feel like cutting the whole thing and making a clean bolt of it." "If you ran away you would soon be wishing yourself back again," says Monica, scornfully. "You know you will have no money until you are twenty-one. People pretend to be discontented, at times, with their lives; but in the long run they generally acknowledge 'there is no place like home.'"