The Real Charlotte. 317 



couraging the singed and half-starved cat on to her lap, she 

 addressed herself to conversation. 



" Wasn't Michael M'Donagh husband to your mother's 

 cousin?" she said to the tailor; "I'm told he had a very 

 large funeral." 



" He had that," answered Dinny, pushing the black hair 

 back from his high forehead, and looking more than ever 

 like a Jewish rabbi ; " three priests, an' five an' twenty cars, 

 an' fifteen pounds of althar money." 



" Well, the three priests have a right to pray their big 

 best for him, with five pounds apiece in their pockets," re- 

 marked Charlotte; "I suppose it was the M'Donagh side 

 gave the most of the altar. Those brothers of old Michael's 

 are all stinking of money." 



" Oh, they're middhn' snug," said Dinny, who had just 

 enough family feeling for the M'Donaghs to make him 

 chary of admitting their wealth ; " annyway, they're able to 

 slap down their five shillin's or their ten shillin' bit upon the 

 althar as well as another." 



" Who got the land ? " asked Charlotte, stroking the cat's 

 filthy head, and thereby perfuming her fingers with salt 

 fish. 



*' Oh, how do I know what turning and twisting of keys 

 there was in it afther himself dyin' ? " said the tailor, with 

 the caution which his hearers understood to be a fatiguing 

 but inevitable convention ; " they say the daughter got the 

 biggest half, an' Shamus Bawn got the other. There's 

 where the battle'll be between them." He laughed sardoni- 

 cally, as he held up the hot iron and spat upon it to 

 ascertain its heat. 



"He'd better let his sister alone, said Charlotte. 

 " Shamus Bawn has more land this minute than he has 

 money enough to stock, with that farm he got from Mr. 

 Lambert the other day, without trying to get more." 



^' Oh, Jim's not so poor altogether that he couldn't 

 bring the law on her if he'd like," said Dinny, immediately 

 resenting the slighting tone \ " he got a good lump of a 

 fortune with the wife." 



" Ah, what's fifty pounds ! " said Charlotte scornfully. 

 " I daresay he wanted every penny of it to pay the fine on 

 Knocklara." 



