"And are you afther making me stay at home all the blessed day, and sending Captain Ussher all the way back to Mohill, and he having come over here by engagement to walk with me,"--this was a fib of Feemy's,--"and all to ask me where I got a new collar?" "May be I was, Feemy, and may be I wasn't; but I suppose there isn't any harum in my asking the question, or in you answering it?" "Oh no, not the laist; only it ain't usual in you to be asking such questions." "But if there's no harum, I ask it now; where were you getting the collar?" "Well, you're very queer; but if you must know, Captain Ussher brought it with him from Mohill." "And if you wanted a parcel from Mohill, why couldn't you let Brady bring it, who is in it constantly, instead of that upstart policeman, who'd think it more condescension to bring that from Mohill, than I would to be carrying a sack of potatoes so far." "There then you're wrong; the policeman, as you're pleased to call him, thinks no such thing." "Well, Feemy, but did you bid him bring it, or did he bring it of his own accord?" Feemy could now shuffle no longer, so blushing slightly, she said, "Well, if you must know then, it was a present; and there's no such great harm in that, I suppose." Here Thady was again bothered; he really did not know whether there was any harm in it or not; a week ago he certainly would have thought not, but he was now inclined to think that there was; but he was not sure, and he sadly wished for Father John to tell him what to do. "Well, Thady, now what was it you were wanting of me?"--and then after a pause, she added, her courage rising as she saw her brother's falling: "Was it anything about Captain Ussher?" "Yes, it was." "Well?" "Is there anything between you and he, Feemy?" "What do you mean by between us, Thady?" and Feemy made a little fruitless attempt to laugh. "Well then; you're in love with him, ain't you? there now, that's the long and the short." "Supposing I was, why shouldn't I?" "Only this, Feemy, he's not in love with you." This put Feemy's back up, "'Deed then, it's little you know about it, for he just is; and I love him too with all my heart, and that's all about it; and you might have found that out without sending him back to Mohill." "I wish then he'd stay at Mohill, and that I might never see him over the door at Ballycloran again!" "That's kind of you, Thady, after what I just told you; but don't tell him so, that's all." "But it's just what I mane to tell him, and what I shall go over to Mohill on purpose to tell him, to-morrow." "Good gracious, Thady! and for why?" "For why, Feemy! becase I still want to see my father's daughter an honest woman, though she may be soon a beggar; becase I don't want to see my sister crouching under a blackguard's foot; becase I don't want the worst disgrace that can happen a family to blacken the name of Macdermot!"