176 GARRYOWEN 



and it seems to me they won't be happy till they 

 get it. The woman from Crowsnest, whom Mr 

 Dashwood got to tidy the place up and Hght the 

 fires and have supper for us the evening we came, 

 has left. She did not get on with the others ; and 

 now this place is all Irish, with the exception of me. 

 A bit of the West coast planted above a most staid 

 and respectable English village. I wonder what 

 the result will be as far as intercommunication goes. 

 " No one has called yet, but, of course, it is too 

 soon. But I hope they will stay away. I have 

 several reasons. — Yours ever, Violet." 



Miss Grimshaw had several very good reasons 

 to make her desire seclusion for herself and the 

 family which she had taken under her wing. I say 

 " taken under her wing " advisedly, for, since the 

 day of her arrival at Drumgool, she had been 

 steadily extending the protection of her practical 

 nature and commonsense to her proteges. In a 

 hundred ways too small for mention in a romance 

 of this description she had interfered in domestic 

 matters. Mrs "Driscoll, for instance, no longer 

 boiled clothes in the soup-kettle, prodding them at 

 intervals with the pastry roller, and Norah no 

 longer swept the carpets under the sofas, Ut the 

 fires with letters left on the mantelpiece, or 

 emptied slops out of the windows ; and these sani- 

 tary reforms had been compassed with no loss of 

 goodwill on the part of the reformed towards the 

 reformer. She had emancipated Effie from her 



