“Oh, well, if you are going to exalt him above your own flesh and blood, I won’t stay and listen to you.”

“You disturb yourself unnecessarily, my dear.  I have no intention of adopting him in place of my son.  But he has done me a great service this after-noon, and displayed a coolness and courage very unusual in a boy of his age.  But for him, I should be eight hundred dollars poorer.”

“Oh, well, you can give him fifty cents, and he will be well paid for his services, as you call them.”

“Fifty cents!” repeated her husband.

“Well, a dollar, if you like.”

“I have given him a hundred dollars.”

“A hundred dollars!” almost screamed Mrs. Preston, who was a very mean woman.  “Are you insane?”

“Not that I am aware of, my dear.”

“It is perfectly preposterous to give such a sum to such a boy.”

“I ought to say that I gave it to him for his mother.  He was not willing to accept it for himself.”

“That’s a likely story,” said Mrs. Preston, incredulously.  “He only wants to make a favorable impression upon you—­perhaps to get more out of you.”

“You misjudge him, my dear.”

“I know he is an artful, intriguing young rascal.  You give him a hundred dollars, yet you refused to give Godfrey ten dollars last week.”

“For a very good reason.  He has a liberal allowance, and must keep within it.  He did not need the money he asked for.”

“Yet you lavish a hundred dollars on this boy.”

“I felt justified in doing so.  Which was better, to give him that sum, or to lose eight hundred?”

“I don’t like the boy, and I never shall.  I suppose he will be strutting around, boasting of his great achievement.  If he had a gun it was nothing to do.”

“I suspect Godfrey would hardly have ventured upon it,” said the colonel, smiling.

“Oh, of course, Godfrey is vastly inferior to the Irish boy!” remarked Mrs. Preston, ironically.  “You admire the family so much that I suppose if I were taken away, you would marry his mother and establish her in my place.”

“If you have any such apprehensions, my dear, your best course is to outlive her.  That will effectually prevent my marrying her, and I pledge you my word that, while you are alive, I shall not think of eloping with her.”

“It is very well to jest about it,” said Mrs. Preston, tossing her head.

“I am precisely of your opinion, my dear.  As you observe, that is precisely what I am doing.”

So the interview terminated.  It was very provoking to Mrs. Preston that her husband should have given away a hundred dollars to Andy Burke’s mother, but the thing was done, and could not be undone.  However, she wrote an account of the affair to Godfrey, who, she knew, would sympathize fully with her view of the case.  I give some extracts from her letter: