A considerable time passed before Martin returned to the meal the three young women had provided for him, during which he was in close consultation with the widow. In the first place, she began upbraiding him for his folly in wishing to marry an old maid for her money; she then taxed him with villany, for trying to cheat Anty out of her property; and when he defended himself from that charge by telling her what he had done about the settlement, she asked him how much he had to pay the rogue of a lawyer for that “gander’s job”. She then proceeded to point out all the difficulties which lay in the way of a marriage between him, Martin, and her, Anty; and showed how mad it was for either of them to think about it. From that, she got into a narrative of Barry’s conduct, and Anty’s sufferings, neither of which lost anything in the telling; and having by this time gossiped herself into a good humour, she proceeded to show how, through her means and assistance, the marriage might take place if he was still bent upon it. She eschewed all running away, and would hear of no clandestine proceedings. They should be married in the face of day, as the Kellys ought, with all their friends round them. “They’d have no huggery-muggery work, up in a corner; not they indeed! why should they?—for fear of Barry Lynch?—who cared for a dhrunken blackguard like that?—not she indeed! who ever heard of a Kelly being afraid of a Lynch?—They’d ax him to come and see his sister married, and av’ he didn’t like it, he might do the other thing.” And so, the widow got quite eloquent on the glories of the wedding, and the enormities of her son’s future brother-in-law, who had, she assured Martin, come down and abused her horribly, in her own shop, before all the town, because she allowed Anty to stay in the house. She then proceeded to the consequences of the marriage, and expressed her hope that when Martin got all that ready money he would “do something for his poor sisthers—for Heaven knew they war like to be bad enough off, for all she’d be able to do for them!” From this she got to Martin’s own future mode of life, suggesting a “small snug cottage on the farm, just big enough for them two, and, may-be, a slip of a girl servant, and not to be taring and tatthering away, as av’ money had no eend; and, afther all,” she added, “there war nothing like industhry; and who know’d whether that born villain, Barry, mightn’t yet get sich a hoult of the money, that there’d be no getting it out of his fist?” and she then depicted, in most pathetic language, what would be the misery of herself and all the Kellys if Martin, flushed with his prosperity, were to give up the farm at Toneroe, and afterwards find that he had been robbed of his expected property, and that he had no support for himself and his young bride.