“Heir, indeed!” shouted her aunt, “and what are you going to live on, if I may make bold to ask?”
“The Major——” began Lizzie.
“The Major can’t keep himself—let alone a son and a daughter-in-law. Why I’m keeping the Major! Well, well, to think of it! First and foremost you will bring down your marriage lines to Father Connell, and then we will get you decently married in chapel, and then we will see how your husband is going to support you; for mind one thing, my good girl, you won’t live here; it would ill become the wife of the heir of the Malones, to be chopping mate at her aunt’s the butcher. Aye and maybe cutting off the best loin chops for her lady mother-in-law.”
“Maybe the Malones will take us in.”
“Oh, keep your may bees for honey, and talk sense. I think I see the Major arming you in to dinner; if he does, maybe you’ll remind him of my bill. I think I see Mrs. Malone and Miss Betty making free with the likes of yees——”
“Miss Betty! I saw Miss Betty this evening—she—she—she,” and here Mrs. Denis Malone, frightened and overwrought, suddenly went off into a fit of screaming hysterics, that were quite as protracted and alarming as if she had been born a lady.
CHAPTER III.
MRS. MACCABE HAS IT OUT WITH THE MAJOR.
“He is a fool who thinks, by force or skill,
To turn the current of a woman’s will.”
—S. Tuke.