"No, nor in ten counties! and what's the good of it all; will ye tell me that?" inquired her aunt peevishly. "There's Miss Dido, with the walk of a duchess and the voice of a thrush, and Miss Helen, a real beauty, and Katie not too bad entirely,—and not a sign of any one, watching wan of them!"
"I think Misther Barry has an eye on Miss Denis," insinuated Sally timidly.
"Is it that spalpeen? An' much good may it do him! She would not look at the same side of the road as him," returned Biddy fiercely. "He would not dar' to ax her. Shure she's the only one of them all knows how to talk to him, and that quenches him rightly."
"That's true for you," assented Sally, nodding her head in grave acknowledgment of this indisputable fact.
"It's just killing me," continued the old woman, "to see them young ladies wasting their looks and their years here, slaving in the house, and garden, like blacks. What's to be the end of it, at all, at all?"
"The end will be that the masther will burn us all in our beds yet," replied Sally with angry promptitude. "What is he up to now?" glancing at one of the tower windows, out of which vast volumes of dense black smoke were curling in lazy clouds.
"Oh, the Lord only knows!" retorted her aunt impatiently, as she turned and walked into the hall with an unusually sour expression on her jovial old countenance.
"There's no daling with the likes of him," she muttered as she descended to the lower regions, "for he will nayther do wan thing, or the other; he won't go properly out of his mind, and he won't lave it alone; and he has me fairly bothered, and me heart is broke, with his mischeevous contrivances."
Meanwhile, the three girls walked over the hill, and passed through Dillon's gate into the precincts of Ballyredmond, a fine park of seemingly endless extent, through which a beautifully-kept avenue wound like a white ribbon, by clumps of beeches, rows of lime trees, and great solitary oaks. Nearer the house beds of brilliant flowers broke the monotony of the turf, and a long gravelled terrace was crowned by an ugly but dignified-looking mansion, that seemed an appropriate centre for the surrounding scene.
The Misses Sheridan and Miss Denis were the last arrivals, and were received by Miss Redmond in the pleasure-ground. They found her sitting under a tree in her bath chair, arrayed in her best white shawl and a picturesque garden bonnet. She was a pretty old lady, with white hair, an ivory skin, and soft, caressing manners, and she greeted the three chaperoneless (to coin a word) girls with evident pleasure. Not so Miss Calderwood, the deputy hostess; her welcome was by no means so gracious or so genial. She gave the two Sheridans a limp shake-hands, and bestowed a curt bow and a long stare upon their cousin, the governess (who was looking remarkably pretty and well-dressed in one of the costumes upon which Mrs. Creery had once fixed her elderly affections). Evidently she did not think that Miss Denis was entitled to participate in the advantages of her acquaintance and patronage. However, Mr. Redmond more than atoned for his ward's deficiencies. He led Helen to a seat, introduced her to several of the county people, fussed about her rather too assiduously with tea and cakes and other light refreshments, and finally took share of the same rustic bench, and engaged her entire attention.