English enough at the castle for that, 'Please your ladyship, I am, and this is the boy,' says I, pulling my own boy forward--for he was shy like, and had stepped a little backward when she came near--'this is the boy that slept with Master Gerald' (that was the master, you know, honey) 'on my breast.'" {87} "'Well, then,' said she, giving one hand to me and the other to my boy, 'remember it is with my foster-brother I mean to lead out the dancing to-night;' and troth, my pet, she was as good as her word, and not a soul would she dance with, for all the fine lords and gentlemen who had come to the wedding, until she had footed it for a good half-hour at least with my Andie, Ah! them were times indeed, my jewel," the old crone querulously wound up her chronicle by saying. "And to think that I should have lived to see the day when the young master's father and the master's child are to be hunted out of their own by a Cromwellian upstart with his 'buddagh Sassenachs,' (Saxon clowns,) like so many bloodhounds at his heels, to ride over us roughshod." So far the young girl had "seriously inclined her ear" to listen, partly to soothe old Grannie's grief by suffering it to flow over, and partly, perhaps, because her own mind, exhausted by present sufferings, found some unconscious relief in letting itself be carried back to those bright days when the sun of worldly prosperity still lighted up her home. The instant, however, that the old woman began, with all the ferocity of a half-tamed nature, to pour out denunciations on the foes who had wrought her ruin, she checked the dangerous indulgence of her feelings by saying: "Hush, dear Grannie, and listen to me. My mother is to stay here until May, (so much grace they have seen fit to do us,) in order that she may collect our stock and gather such of our people together as may choose to follow us into exile." "Then, may be, she'll take me," cried old Grannie suddenly, her withered face lightening up into an expression of hope and joy that was touching to behold. "May be she'll take me, a-lannah!" Nellie Netterville eyed Grannie wistfully. Nothing, in fact, would she have better liked than to have taken that old relic of happier days with her to her exile; but old, decrepid, bowed down by grief as well as years, as Grannie was, it would have been folly, even more than cruelty, to have suffered her to offer herself for Connaught transplantation. It would have been, however, but a thankless office to have explained this in as many words; so Nellie only said: "When the time comes, dear old woman, when the time comes, it will be soon enough to talk about it then--that is to say, if you are still able and willing for the venture."