Gerald Cavanagh was the first who felt something like shame at the
rebuke conveyed by this tearful embrace of his pure-hearted and
ingenuous daughters, and he said, addressing his wife:--
"We're wrong to defend him, or any one, for the evil he has done,
bekaise it can't be defended; but, in the mane time, every day will
bring him more sense an' experience, an' he won't repute this work;
besides, a wife would settle him down."
"But, father," said Hanna, now speaking for the first time, "there's
one thing that strikes me in the business you're talkin' about, an' it's
this--how do you know whether Hycy Burke has any notion, good, bad, or
indifferent, of marrying Kathleen?"
"Why," replied her mother, "didn't he write to her upon the subject?"
"Why, indeed, mother, it's not an easy thing to answer that question,"
replied Hanna. "She sartinly resaved a letther from him, an' indeed, I
think," she added, her animated face brightening into a smile, "that as
the boys is gone to bed, we had as good read it."
"No, Hanna, darling, don't," said Kathleen--"I beg you won't read it."
"Well, but I beg I will," she replied; "it'll show them, at any rate,
what kind of a reformation is likely to come over him. I have it here in
my pocket--ay, this is it. Now, father," she proceeded, looking at the
letter, "here is a letter, sent to my sister--'To Miss Cavanagh,' that's
what's on the back of it--and what do you think Hycy, the sportheen,
asks her to do for him?"
"Why, I suppose," replied her mother, "to run away wid him?"
"Na"
"Then to give her consent to marry him?" said her father.
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