agitation, McShanus. This is really very interesting.”

I could see that he found it so. In all the years I have known him, never have I seen Ean Fabos so much put about or so little anxious to escape from his own thoughts. Fine figure of a man that he was, with great square shoulders hammered out in the rowing boats, a very Saxon all over him with a curly brown wig and a clean-shaven chin and boy’s eyes and a man’s heart—that was the body corporate of Ean Fabos. His mind not a man among us had ever read. I would have named him yesterday the most careless banker of his riches and money in the three kingdoms of Ireland, Wales, and England. And here I found him, set thinking like a philosopher, because he had stumbled across a few paltry pearls stolen from his cabinet. Should I alter my opinion of him for that? Devil a bit. ’Twas the girl of whom he thought, I could see.

So here was Timothy McShanus deserting the baked meats, to say nothing of his convenient corner in the buffet, to go out and stare at a red shepherdess with picture books and maizypop to sell. And what kind of a colleen was it that he saw? Why, nothing out of the ordinary when viewed from afar. But come a little closer, and you shall see the blackest and the wickedest pair of eyes that ever looked out from the face of Venus. ’Tis no common man I am in my judgment of the sex; but this I will say, that when the girl looked at me, she found me as red in the face as a soldier at a court-martial. Not tall above the common; her hair a deep chestnut, running almost to black; her mouth just a rosebud between two pretty cheeks; there was something of France and something of America helping each other to make a wonder of her. Young as she was—and I supposed her to be about eighteen—her figure would have given her five years more according to our northern ideas; but I, who know Europe as I know Pall Mall, said no—she is eighteen, McShanus, my boy, and America has kept that peach-blossom upon her cheeks. Had I been mistaken, her voice would have corrected me. ’Twas a young girl’s voice when she spoke, clear and musical as the song of silver bells.

“Now won’t you buy a novel?” she said, bustling up to me just like a bunch of roses. “Here’s Sir Arthur Hall Rider’s very latest—an autograph copy for one guinea.”

“Me dear,” says I, “’tis Timothy McShanus who reads his own novels. Speak not of his poor rivals.”

“Why, how clever of you!” says she, looking at me curiously. “And, of course, your books are the best. Why didn’t you send me some to sell on my stall?”

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