“That will be as much as I shall want; and you shall have it back on my word of honour. I suppose you have not got it about you?”
“No, but I will send or bring it over myself this evening.”
“Is this your brother?” she inquired—“the stout young man with the gun coming in at the gate.”
“Yes, my brother Barker—he has been out after hares.”
“Hullo, Ulick!” he began, as he came within earshot. “I say, who is your lady friend?”
“Mrs. Aron, a friend of Mrs. Grogan in America—our aunt, you know.”
“No, I don’t know her, thank goodness, and don’t want to. A lady who disgraced the family, and made a scandal and went off with a blackguard postman!”
“He was not a blackguard, sir,” she broke in indignantly, “and he was the son of a respectable farmer. By all accounts, she was kept very strict, and had no young society of her own class.”
“She doesn’t seem to be keeping much society now, if you are a specimen of her acquaintances,” scoffed Barky, with deliberate insolence, as he stared at her weather-beaten waterproof and old-fashioned bonnet. “I was always against my mother making it up with her, and you may tell her that if you like—from me. As to her money, I’ll believe it when I see it! America is a queer sort of place!”