From Dumfries and Glasgow, Nipper sent very brief letters expressive of a desire to come to terms with his father. He was married. That could not be altered or amended. Meg came of a respectable family, and (save the breakages) no fault could be found with her. True, Mrs. Donnan sighed. She would rather have seen Nipper going proudly down the aisle with another than Meg Linwood on his arm. As for Butcher Donnan himself, as soon as he got over dwelling upon the thrashing he meant to give Nipper when he caught him, the outlines of a broader, farther reaching, less arbitrary settlement began to form themselves in his mind. He saw his lawyer, Mr. John Liddesdale, and what they said to one another bore fruit afterwards. But it was a busy ten days for Butcher Donnan. He had to spend the early morning of every day in the down town shop. He had the rooms above it cleaned out, new furniture installed--and he abused his son as he went. "The young fool!" was the best word for Nipper, forgetting that he himself had married at eighteen. Each afternoon he was out in the blue and gold van with the collapsible rain-hood. In the evenings he looked into the ashes of the kitchen fire and thought. It was then that Elizabeth proved herself above rubies to the old folks of New Erin. "Faith, didn't I tell ye, from the first," cried Butcher Donnan, slapping his thigh mightily, "that's the girl, Cynthia! Nothing she will not turn her hand to--as smart as a jay, and all as sweet and natural as the Queen of Sheba coming it over Solomon!" "It strikes me, Butcher Donnan," said his wife, "that for an old man you are getting wonderfully fond o' the lass!" She was smiling also, a loving, caressing, motherly smile, showing mostly about the eyes, as she spoke of Elizabeth Fortinbras, which was very good to see. "Fond of her, is it?" cried Donnan. "I declare, I'm as fond of her as I wad ha' been o' my own daughter, if it had pleased Mary an' the saints to give us one!" "_And why not?_" said Mrs. Donnan, bending suddenly towards her husband, and startling him with the earnestness of her regard. "Why not--Cynthia, woman? You have been talking to Mr. Liddesdale?" "Not I," said his wife, smiling. "_You_ should not talk in your sleep, that's all, Butcher Donnan, if you want to keep your little secrets." "Ah, wife, wife, it's you that are the wonderful woman," cried the Butcher-Pastry-Cook; "but if that be so, faith, it's just as well I don't sleep with that Thief-o'-the-Wurrld Kemp, our sugar merchant. But what say you, wife?" "I say what you say, Butcher Donnan!" "Do you think she would accept? Would she come to us and be our daughter?" "By this and that," said his wife, "mind, I take it for granted that you have done what is right by Nipper, and that he and Meg may come home when they like?"