Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/484

 . 26, 1861.]

six o’clock, the evening of the day he had brought home Coral, Keefe went to Nick Brady’s shanty. A table was placed just inside the door on which the remnants of the afternoon meal were lying, and Mrs. Brady was sitting outside, smoking her pipe, for she believed in the “rights of women” to make use of tobacco as firmly as any Boston lady lecturer, or “fast belle” of New York or Charleston can believe in their right to any other masculine privilege they may take it into their heads to desire. As Mrs. Brady smoked, she muttered to herself at intervals, and an irritable movement of foot and hand, a shaking of her head, and knitting of her brows showed that her temper was ruffled too far to be calmed even by the soothing influence of her favourite solace. On seeing Keefe, she broke forth with angry complaints against Denis, whose unaccountable absence was the cause of her present annoyance. Coral and Denis, both, having been missed much about the same time, the enraged and indignant woman at first concluded they had gone away together; and, even still, though Coral had returned, and in answer to Mrs. Brady’s questions simply assured her that she had not seen Denis since she left Long Arrow, there was still a lurking suspicion in Nelly’s mind that her son’s sudden disappearance had been in some manner owing to the Indian girl; so she talked on, mixing the reproaches she showered on Denis with angry hints that his infatuation for Coral was at the bottom of all his faults, and vehement wishes that the unlucky little savage had never darkened her door.

It was very clear that Coral had not told Mrs. Brady the secret of her birth, and knowing the woman as well as he did, Keefe could not help