‘Thank you, my dear,’ said the quiet little woman.  ’Then if the rest go away, I may manage about the girl?’

’Do what you like, only get rid of ’em somehow.’

‘Thank you.’

’Oh, you needn’t thank me!  I’d as soon send every one of ’em to jail as not; but I can’t stand your puffing and sighing just as if they were all your own flesh and blood.’

‘We’re all the same flesh and blood, my dear.’

’I’d be uncommon sorry to think so.  I’ve nothing but Welsh flesh and blood about me, and should be loath to have any other, Irish, Scotch, or English either.’

Mrs Prothero disappeared.

’That ’ooman ‘ould wheedle the stone out of a mill,’ continued the farmer, rubbing his eyes, and deliberately taking off his night-cap, ’and yet she don’t ever seem to have her own way, and is as meek as Moses.  She has wheedled me out of my Sunday nap, so I suppose I may as well get up.  Hang the Irish!  There is no getting rid of ’em.  She’s given ’em a night’s lodging, and a supper for so many years, that they come and ask as if it was their due.  But I’ll put a stop to it, yet, in spite of her, or my name isn’t David Prothero.’

When Mr Prothero came forth from his dormitory, he was in his very best Sunday attire.  As he walked across the farm-yard in search of his wife, there was an air about him that seemed to say, ’I am monarch of all I survey.’  Indeed, few monarchs are as independent, and proud of their independence, as David Prothero of Glanyravon.

He was a tall, muscular man, of some fifty years of age.  He was well made, and of that easy, swinging gait, that is rather the teaching of Dame Nature, than of the dancing mistress or posture master.  His face was full and ruddy, betokening health, spirits, and that choleric disposition to which his countrymen are said to incline, whether justly or unjustly is not for me to determine.  His hair had a reddish tinge, and his whiskers were decidedly roseate, bearing still further testimony to a slight irrascibility of temperament.  But he was a good-looking man, in spite of his hair and whiskers, which, as his wife admired them, are not to be despised.

‘Where’s your mistress, Sam?’ roared Mr Prothero across the farm-yard.

‘In the barn, master,’ answered a man, who was eating bread and cheese on the gate, and swinging his legs pleasantly about.

‘Tell her I want her,’

In answer to the summons, immediately appeared his worthy helpmate.  She carried a very beautiful half-blown rose in her hand, which, as soon as she approached her husband, she placed carefully in his button-hole, standing on tiptoe to perform this graceful Sunday morning service.

‘Thank you, mother,’ said Mr Prothero, smiling, and looking down complacently on his little wife.

What went with all his lecture upon the profligacy of Irish beggars?  I suppose it was silently delivered from his breast to the rose, for none of it came to his lips, though it was quite ready to be heard when the rose made her appearance.