"But, Feemy, he must like it; and you shouldn't like your lover the more for thinking so little of your brother, or, for the matter of that, of yourself either."
"You know, Father John, I can't help what he thinks of Thady. As to his thinking of me, I'm quite satisfied with that, and I suppose that's enough."
Father John was beginning to wax wroth, partly because he was displeased with Feemy himself, and partly because Feemy answered him too knowingly.
"Well, then, Feemy, it'll be one of the two: either Captain Ussher will have to speak to Thady, and settle something about the marriage in a proper and decent way; or else Thady will be speaking to him. And now, which do you think will be the best?"
"It's not like you, Father John, to be making Thady quarrel with Captain Ussher. You know it'd come to a quarrel if Thady was to be spaking to Myles that way; and he would never think of doing so av you didn't be putting him up to it."
"And that's little like you, Feemy, to be saying that to your priest; telling me I put the young men up to be quarrelling: it's to save you many a heart-ache, and many a sting of sorrow and remorse; it's to prevent all the evil of unlawful love—bad blood, and false looks—that I've come here on a most disagreeable and thankless errand; and now you tell me I'd be putting the young men up to fight!"
Feemy had, by this time, become sullen, but she didn't dare go farther with her priest.
"I didn't say you'd be making them fight, Father John. I only said, if you told Thady not to be meddling with Myles, why, in course, they wouldn't be quarrelling."
"And how could I tell a brother not to meddle with his sister's honour, and reputation, and happiness? But now, Feemy, I'll propose another plan to you. If you don't think my advice on such a subject likely to be good—and very likely it isn't, for you see I never had a lover of my own—what do you say to your speaking to your friend, Mrs. McKeon, about it? Or, if you like, I'll speak to her; and then, perhaps, you won't be against taking her advice on the subject. Supposing, now, she was to speak to Captain Ussher—from herself, you know, as your friend—do you think he'd love the girl that's to be his wife worse for having a friend that was willing to stand in the place of a mother to her, when she'd none of her own?"
"Why, I do think it would look odd, Mrs. McKeon meddling with it."