“Well, s’long until to-morrow then,” cried my father, getting up into the front row of his own ear, with the advocate beside him and Father Dan and myself behind.

On the way home Father Dan talked of the business that had brought me back, saying I was not to think too much of anything he might have said of Lord Raa in his letters, seeing that he had spoken from hearsay, and the world was so censorious—­and then there was no measuring the miraculous influence that might be exercised by a good woman.

He said this with a certain constraint, and was more at ease when he spoke of the joy that ought to come into a girl’s life at her marriage—­her first love, her first love-letter, her wedding-day and her first baby, all the sweet and wonderful things of a new existence which a man could never know.

“Even an old priest may see that,” he said, with a laugh and a pat of my hand.

We dropped Mr. Curphy at his house in Holmtown, and then my father sat with us at the back, and talked with tremendous energy of what he had done, of what he was going to do, and of all the splendours that were before me.

“You’ll be the big woman of the island, gel, and there won’t be a mother’s son that dare say boo to you.”

I noticed that, in his excitement, his tongue, dropping the suggestion of his adopted country, reverted to the racy speech of his native soil; and I had a sense of being with him before I was born, when he returned home from America with millions of dollars at his back, and the people who had made game of his father went down before his face like a flood.

Such of them as had not done so then (being of the “aristocracy” of the island and remembering the humble stock he came from) were to do so now, for in the second generation, and by means of his daughter’s marriage, he was going to triumph over them all.

“We’ll beat ’em, gel!  My gough, yes, we’ll beat ’em!” he cried, with a flash of his black eyes and a masterful lift of his eyebrows.

As we ran by the mansions of the great people of Ellan, he pointed them out to me with a fling of the arm and spoke of the families in a tone of contempt.

“See that?  That’s Christian of Balla-Christian.  The man snubbed me six months ago.  He’ll know better six months to come. . . .  That’s Eyreton.  His missus was too big to call on your mother—­she’ll call on you, though, you go bail.  See yonder big tower in the trees?  That’s Folksdale, where the Farragans live.  The daughters have been walking over the world like peacocks, but they’ll crawl on it like cockroaches . . .  Hulloh, here’s ould Balgean of Eagle Hill, in his grand carriage with his English coachman. . . .  See that, though?  See him doff his hat to you, the ould hypocrite?  He knows something.  He’s got an inkling.  Things travel.  We’ll beat ’em, gel, we’ll beat ’em!  They’ll be round us like bees about a honeypot.”

It was impossible not to catch the contagion of my father’s triumphant spirits, and in my different way I found myself tingling with delight as I recognised the scenes associated with my childhood—­the village, the bridge, the lane to Sunny Lodge and Murphy’s Mouth, and the trees that bordered our drive.