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128 is not for that poor gentleman's good you say that."

"Like the cat, Father," said John. "'It's for his own good the cat purrs.'"

"But, for all that," said the priest, "it is hard to know which of the two, Sive or the gentleman, will be the greater gainer or loser by the marriage, if it takes place. If he is really a gentleman, it is a long time since one came from Dublin who was such a perfect fool as he. That is the lady that will teach him the commandments of his religion before he has been long married to her! If he is an impostor, he won't be allowed much odds. If he imagines that he will be able to keep Sive in order, the poor man is making the greatest mistake he ever made in his life. Sive was not curbed in time. Her mother died before she was quite a year old. Dermot let her have her own way until it was too late, and she had got altogether out of control."

"I don't think it is a question of control, Father," said John. "I lost my Eileen when little Mary was only two years old. I never kept that child in any sort of subjection. She was allowed to have her own way, if ever a child was allowed it. Nobody ever did so much as raise their voice to her, not to speak of using an angry word to her, or striking her. And see how things are with us. Why, as sure as you are sitting there, she thinks of everything I want before I think of it myself."

"Certainly, John," said the priest, "there is a grace in some people more than in others, and there is a 'good drop' in some people more than in others—or a 'bad drop.' But, nevertheless, so far