often that way. But the quiet talks with Jean—Jean who had learned wisdom from her sisters' love affairs, from the escapades of her brothers, and who, by the rude rule of fact, could reduce to cautious verity the fiction which Patsy had learned from her Uncle Julian's books.

So Patsy went often to Glenanmays, and without interrupting the busy round of the afternoon's duties, prescribed by Diarmid for each member of his family, she made her way to the little shed hidden by the burnside, on the green in front of which the clothes-lines were strung, and clean garments fluttered in the sea-wind, fresh and glad as ship's bunting.

"Yes," Jean Garland would say after the girls had kissed one another, "I was up early this morning—soon after dawn. Madge Blair and I had our arms in the tubs by half-past three, and she had got the pot to boil before that. So now I am ready for the ironing, and—"

"Oh, let me help!" cried Patsy.

"Very well," Jean acquiesced, "you are getting to be none so ill with the goffering iron and the pliers—"

"Better with the fancy than the plain!" laughed Patsy.

"It is to be expected, you have the light hand, and you have taste—most have neither one nor the other, but iron for all the world like a roller going over a wet field."

They worked a while in silence, only looking up occasionally and smiling at each other, or Jean might throw in a hint as to a frill or tucker which must be dealt with in a particular way.

Suddenly Jeanie Garland came nearer, a pile of folded linen over her arm.

"Have you heard anything of the press-gang at your house, Patsy?"

"Nothing," said Patsy, busy with a best Sunday cap, all lace frills and furbelows. "Of course there is always Captain Laurence at Stranryan. On clear nights you can hear his fifes and drums by standing on the stile above our house, and they say there is a King's ship or two about Belfast Lough—but why do you ask?"

Jean Garland paused yet nearer to Patsy and spoke in her ear.

"It's the lads!" she murmured. "They are in it. I am feared for them."

"What?" exclaimed Patsy, but checked by a glance she instantly lowered her voice—"not Fergus and Stair and Agnew?"

 Prev. P 13/232 next