"Not a breath! And I would not be the one to tell her," Uncle Ulick added, with some grimness.
"Yet it may be necessary?"
Uncle Ulick shook his fist at a particularly importunate beggar who had ventured across the forecourt. "It's a gift the little people never gave me to tell unpleasant things," he said. "And if you'll be told by me, Colonel, you'll travel easy. The girl has a spirit, and you'll not persuade her to stand in her brother's light, at all, at all! She has it fast that her grandfather wronged him—and old Sir Michael was queer-tempered at times, God forbid I should say the other! The gift to her will go for nothing, you'll see!"
"She must be a very noble girl."
"Devil a better has He made!"
"But if her grandfather was right in thinking so ill of his grandson?"
"I'm not saying he wasn't," Uncle Ulick muttered.
"Then we must not let her set the will aside."
Ulick Sullivan shrugged his shoulders. "Let?" he said. "Faith! it's but little it'll be a question of that! James is for taking, and she's for giving! He's her white swan, and to her mind, sleeping or waking, as Darby says, he'd tread on eggs and sorra a chick the less! Let? Who's to hinder?"
"You."