"Report says you do, Kate dear."
"But you know, Winny, report does not always spake thrue, as you say yourself."
"Ay, but as you said just now, Kate, it sometimes makes a good hit."
"Well, Winny, I wish you joy at all events, with all my heart. Both your fathers is anxious for your match; an' sure, when the two farms is joined in one, with you an' Tom, you can live like a lady. I suppose you'll hould your head too high for poor Kate an' Emon-a-knock then."
There was a sadness in Kate's tone as she said this, which, from ignorance of how matters really stood, was partly genuine, and, from anxiety to find it out, was partly assumed.
But she had turned the key and the door flew open. Winny could fence with her feelings no longer.
"Kate Mulvey," she exclaimed, "do not believe the reports you hear about me and Tom Murdock. I'm aware of what you say about his father and mine being anxious to unite the farms by our marriage. I don't want to say anything against Tom Murdock; but he'll never call me wife. There now, Kate jewel, you have the truth. I'll be well enough off, Kitty, without Tom Murdock's money or land; and when I really don't care for him, don't you think it would be much better and handsomer of him to bestow himself and it upon some nice girl without a penny" (and she glanced slyly at Kate, whose cheeks got rosy red), "than to be striving to force it upon one that doesn't want it—nor wish for it? And don't you think it would be much better and handsomer for me, who has a nice little fodeen, and must come in for my father's land,—God between him and harm!—to do the same, if I could meet with a nice boy that really cared for myself, and not for my money? Answer me them questions, Kate."
Kate was silent; but her eyes had assumed quite a different expression, if they had not altogether turned almost a different color. The weight of Winny's rich rivalry had been lifted from her heart, and so far as that obstacle had been dreaded, the coast was now clear. Of course she secretly agreed in the propriety of Winny's views, and it was only necessary that she should now do so openly.
"You didn't answer me them questions yet, Kate."
"Well I could, Winny, if I liked it; but I don't wish to have act, hand, or part in setting you against your father's wishes."