"It's yours, sir," said Mat, delighted, loading Flanagan with "Good byes," and "God save yous," until they should meet next morning at breakfast.
Mat rode home in great glee at the prospect of providing so well for one of his girls, and told them a man would be there the next morning to make choice of one of them for his wife. The girls, very naturally, inquired who the man was; to which Mat, in the plenitude of patriarchal power, replied, "that was nothing to them;" and his daughters had sufficient experience of his temper to know there was no use in asking more questions after such an answer. He only added, she would be "well off that should get him." Now, their father being such a curmudgeon, it is no wonder the girls were willing to take the chance of a good-humoured husband instead of an iron-handed father; so they set to work to make themselves as smart as possible for the approaching trial of their charms, and a battle royal ensued between the sisters as to the right and title to certain pieces of dress which were hitherto considered a sort of common property amongst them, and of which the occasion of a fair, or a pattern,[4] ] or market-day was enough to establish the possession, by whichever of the girls went to the public place; but now, when a husband was to be won, privilege of all sorts was pleaded, in which discussion there was more noise than sound reason, and so many violent measures to secure the envied morceaux, that some destruction of finery took place where there was none to spare; and, at last, seniority was agreed upon to decide the question; so that when Nance had the first plunder of the chest which held all their clothes in common, and Biddy made the second grab, poor Kitty had little left but her ordinary rags to appear in. But as, in the famous judgment on Ida's Mount, it is hinted that Venus carried the day by her scarcity of drapery, so did Kitty conquer by want of clothes: not that Love sat in judgment; it was Plutus turned the scale. But, to leave metaphor and classic illustration, and go back to Mat Riley's cabin—the girls were washing, and starching, and ironing all night, and the morning saw them arrayed for conquest. Flanagan came, and breakfasted, and saw the three girls. A flashy silk handkerchief which Nancy wore put her hors de combat very soon; she was set down at once, in his mind, as extravagant. Biddy might have had a chance if she had made anything like a fair division with her youngest sister; but Kitty had been so plundered, that her shabbiness won an easy victory over the niggard's heart: he saw in her "the making of a thrifty wife;" besides which, she was possibly the best looking, and certainly the youngest of the three; and there is no knowing how far old Flanagan might have been influenced by those considerations.
He spoke very little to any of the girls; but, when he was leaving the house, he said to the father, as he was shaking hands with him, "Mat, I'll do it;" and, pointing to Kitty, he added, "That's the one I'll have."
Great was the rage of the elder sisters, for Flanagan was notoriously a wealthy man; and when he quitted the house, Kitty set up such a shout of laughter, that her father and sisters told her several times "not to make a fool of herself." Still she laughed, and throughout the day sometimes broke out into sudden roars; and while her sides shook with merriment, she would throw herself into a chair, or lean against the wall, to rest herself after the fatigue of her uproarious mirth. Now Kitty, while she laughed at the discomfiture of her greedy sisters, also laughed at the mistake into which Flanagan had fallen; for, as her father said of her, she was, "'cute," and she more than suspected the cause of Flanagan's choice, and enjoyed the anticipation of his disappointment, for she was fonder of dress than either Nancy or Biddy, and revelled in the notion of astonishing "the old niggard," as she called him; and this she did "many a time and oft." In vain did Flanagan try to keep her extravagance within bounds. She would either wheedle, reason, bully, or shame him into doing what she said "was right and proper for a snug man like him." His house was soon well furnished: she made him get her a jaunting car. She sometimes would go to parties, and no one was better dressed than the woman he chose for her rags. He got enraged now and then, but Kitty pacified him by soft words and daring inventions of her fertile fancy. Once, when he caught her in the fact of wearing a costly crimson silk gown, and stormed, she soothed him by telling him it was her old black one she had dyed; and this bouncer, to the great amusement of her female friends, he loved to repeat, as a proof of what a careful contriving creature he had in Kitty. She was naturally quick-witted. She managed him admirably, deceived him into being more comfortable than ever he had been before, and had the laudable ambition of endeavouring to improve both his and her own condition in every way. She set about educating herself, too, as far as her notions of education went; and, in a few years after her marriage, by judiciously using the means which her husband's wealth afforded her of advancing her position in society, no one could have recognised in the lively and well-dressed Mrs. Flanagan the gawky daughter of a middling farmer. She was very good-natured, too, towards her sisters, whose condition she took care to improve with her own; and a very fair match for the eldest was made through her means. The younger one was often staying in her house, dividing her time nearly between the town and her father's farm, and no party which Mrs. Flanagan gave or appeared at went off without giving Biddy a chance to "settle herself in the world." This was not done without a battle now and then with old Flanagan, whose stinginess would exhibit itself upon occasion; but at last all let and hindrance to the merry lady ceased, by the sudden death of her old husband, who left her the entire of his property, so that, for the first time, his will was her pleasure.
After the funeral of the old man, the "disconsolate widow" was withdrawn from her own house by her brother and sister to the farm, which grew to be a much more comfortable place than when Kitty left; for to have remained in her own house after the loss of "her good man" would have been too hard on "the lone woman." So said her sister and her brother, though, to judge from the widow's eyes, she was not very heart-broken: she cried as much, no doubt, as young widows generally do after old husbands—and could Kitty be expected to do more?
She had not been many days in her widowhood, when Biddy asked her to drive into the town, where Biddy had to do a little shopping—that great business of ladies' lives.
"Oh, Biddy, dear, I must not go out so soon."
"'T will do you good, Kitty."
"I mustn't be seen, you know—'t wouldn't be right; and poor dear Flanagan not buried a week!"
"Sure, who'll see you? We'll go in the covered car, and draw the curtains close, and who'll be the wiser?"