"You have been of use already, dear Fred. You have sent me and the dear children to this sweet place, where we have been safer and happier than--" (she checked herself); "and your generous present too. I feel quite a girl again, thanks to you. Val and I have done nothing but laugh all day long;" and she began kissing him too. "'How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away!'" broke out Scoutbush. "What a pity it is now, that I should have two such sweet creatures making love to me, and can't marry either of them? Why did ye go and be my father's daughters, mavourneen? I'd have made a peeress of the one of ye, if ye'd had the sense to be anybody else's sisters." At which they all laughed, and laughed, and chattered broad Irish together as they used to do for fun in old Kilanbaggan Castle, before Lucia was a weary wife, and Valencia a worldly fine lady, and Scoutbush a rackety guardsman, breaking half of the ten commandments every week, rather from ignorance than vice. "Well, I'm glad ye're pleased with me, asthore," said he at last to Lucia; "but I've done another little good deed, I flatter myself; for I've brought away the poor spalpeen of a priest, and have got him safe in the house." Valencia stopped short in her fun. "Why, what have ye to say against that, Miss Val?" "Why, won't he be a little in the way?" said Valencia, not knowing what to say. "Faith, he needn't trouble you; and I shall take very good care--I wonder when the supper is coming--that neither he nor any else troubles me. But really," said he, in his natural voice, and with some feeling, "I was ashamed to go away and leave him there. He would have died if we had. He worked day and night. Talk of saints and martyrs! Campbell himself said he was an idler by the side of him." "Oh! I hope Major Campbell has not over-exerted himself!" "He? nothing hurts him. He's as hard as his own sword. But the poor curate worked on till he got the cholera himself. He always expected it, longed for it; Campbell said--wanted to die. Some love affair, I suppose, poor fellow?--and a terrible bout he had for eight-and-forty hours. Thurnall thought him gone again and again; but he pulled the poor fellow through, after all, and we got some one (that is, Campbell did) to take his duty; and brought him away, after a good deal of persuasion; for he would not move as long as there was a fresh case in the town; that is why we never wrote. We did not know till the last hour when we should start; and we expected to be with you in two days, and give you a pleasant surprise. He was half dead when we got him on board; but the week's sea-air helped him through; so I must not grumble at these northerly breezes. 'It's an ill wind that blows nobody good,' they say!"