“Isn't it lovely to hear her?” he said. “Don't it do me a sight of good? There, open the window wide, Nora, before your mother comes in. Oh, your mother is as pleased as Punch, and for her sake I'd bear a good deal; but I am a changed man. The old times are gone, never to return. Call this place Castle O'Shanaghgan. It may be suitable for an English nobleman to live in, but it's not my style; it's not fit for an Irish squire. We are free over here, and we don't go in for luxuries and smotherations.”
“Ah, father, I had to go through a great deal of that in England,” said Nora. “It's awful to think that sort of life has come here; but there—there's the window wide open. Do you feel a bit of a breeze, dad?”
“To be sure I do; let me breathe it in. Prop me up in bed, Nora. They said I was to lie flat on my back, but, bedad! I won't now that you have come back.”
Nora pushed some pillows under her father, and sat behind him to support him, and at last she got him to sit up in bed with his face turned to the wide-open window.
The blinds were rattling, the curtains were being blown into the room, and the soft, wild sound of the sea fell on his ears.
“Ah, I'm better now,” he said; “my lungs are cleared at bit. You had best shut the window before your lady-mother comes in. And put the candle so that I can't see the fal-lals too much,” he continued; “but place it so that I can gaze at your bonny face.”
“You must tell me how you were hurt, father, and where.”
“Bedad! then, I won't—not to-night. I want to have everything as cheerful as possible to-night. My little girl has come back—the joy of my heart, the light of my eyes, the top of the morning, and I'm not going to fret about anything else.”
“You needn't—you needn't,” said Nora. “Oh! it is good to see you again. There never was anybody like you in all the world. And you were longing for Nora?”
“Now, don't you be fishing.”