Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/233

Rh his mind, and the same reason had stirred it.

"It has served us long enough," he said. "I see no reason to change it now."

A few weeks after the meeting a neighbour passing FitzGerald's house saw the old father in the garden, and spoke to him across the gate.

"I hear Ernest and Hugh Kavanagh are madly in love with your daughter."

The old man started; then smiled.

"By Jove!" he said. "How these little ones grow up. In love with the child," he laughed aloud—then turned serious. "If it is true, it is no bad news. They are good fellows—clean, straight men, and they are rich. There are no hands I would more willingly place her in."

"But she will have to choose—have to choose," the old neighbour muttered. "She can't have both, and neither will like to be left."

"Whichever she choose," FitzGerald said, "they are equally good. If he be a bit older than her, well, all the better. It's the emptyheaded lads who don't know the worth of a woman's love. Better an old man's darling than a young man's slave. Not that they are old—in their prime, it is, they are."