“Begad, she's a fine girl; devil a lie in it, but she has n't her equal! and as sharp as a needle, too,” muttered he, as he jogged along the shingly beach, probably for the first time in his whole life forgetting the effect he was producing on the bystanders.

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER V. A STUDIO AND AN ARTIST

“Is my uncle in the library, Terence?” asked Mary of a very corpulent old man, in a red-brown wig.

“No, miss, he's in the—bother it, then, if I ever can think of the name of it.”

“The studio, you mean,” said she, smiling.

“Just so, Miss Mary,” replied he, with a sigh; for he remembered certain penitential hours passed by himself in the same locality.

“Do you think you could manage to let him know I want him—that is, that I have something important to say to him?”

“It's clean impossible, miss, to get near him when he's there. Sure, is n't he up on a throne, dressed out in goold and dimonds, and as cross as a badger besides, at the way they're tormenting him?”

“Oh, that tiresome picture, is it never to be completed?” muttered she, half unconsciously.