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“Well, you needn’t see Andy if you don’t want to,” said Sylvia.

“Oh! but I do want to,” and Margaret laughed through her tears at her own inconsistency. “Besides, Dora wants me to help him get a place, and I must do that; and then, sure, miss, do you think I’d let him know that I cared a farthin’ fer him? Not a bit of it!” and Maggie pushed back her hair and held herself up proudly.

The next morning, as Margaret laid the morning paper on Mr. Thorne’s table in the library, she ventured to ask if he knew of a place for a friend of hers that was coming from Ireland the next week. That gentleman had caught the infection of Sylvia’s enthusiasm for the Irish girl, and by the blush on her cheek when she made the request he was sure that his penetration had divined the girl’s secret. So he made some inquiries about Andy, and, finding that he was “handy with tools,” the merchant thought he could give him a place in his packing department.

It happened, therefore, that Sylvia rarely spent any more evenings in the kitchen. Instead of that, her little sister used to frequent it, for Andy was very ingenious in making chairs, tables, and other furniture for doll houses, and little Sophy thought him the nicest man in the world. Maggie was very cool and repellent to him, with little spells of relenting. Sometimes Andy felt himself so much snubbed that he would leave after a five minutes’ call, in which event Maggie Byrne was sure to relax a little at the door, and Sylvia or Sophy was almost certain to find her in tears afterward.

Andy could not, perhaps, have defined his feelings toward Margaret. He could not resist the attraction of the kitchen, for was not Maggie his old playmate and the sister of Dora? Sure, there was no harm at all in a fellow’s goin’ to see, just once a week, the sister of his swateheart, when the ocean kept him from seein’ his swateheart herself. But if Andy had been a man accustomed to analyze his feelings he might have inquired how it came that he liked his swateheart’s sister better even than his swateheart herself.

One evening he had a letter from Dora, and he thought to cheer Margaret with good news from home. But she would not be cheered.

“Now what’s the matter, Mag?” Andy said coaxingly. “Don’t that fellow in Larne write to ye?”

“What fellow in Larne?” demanded Margaret with asperity.

“Why, him that used to be so swate when ye was a-workin’ in the mill.”

“Who told you that?”

“Oh, now, you needn’t try to kape it from me! Don’t you think I knew all about it? Do you think Dora wouldn’t tell me, honey? Don’t I know you was engaged to him before you left the mill at Larne? Has he gone an’ desaved you now, Maggie? If he has, I don’t wonder you’re cross.”

“Andy, that isn’t true. I never had any b’y at Larne, at all.”

“Now, what’s the use denying it? That’s always the way with you girls about such things.”

“Andy Doyle, do you go out of this kitchen, and don’t you never come back. I never desaved you in my life, and I won’t have nobody say that I did.”

A conflict of feeling had made Margaret irritable, and Andy was the most convenient object of wrath in the absence of Dora. Andy started slowly out through the hall; there he turned about, and said:

“Hold a bit, my poor Mag. Let me git me thoughts together. It’s me’s been desaved. If it hadn’t ‘a’ been fer that fellow down at Larne there wouldn’t never ‘a’ been anything betwixt me and Dora. And now—-“

“Don’t you say no more, Andy. Dora’s a child, and she wanted you. Don’t ye give her up. If you give her up, and she, poor child, on the other sides of the water, I’ll never respict ye–d’ye hear that, now, Andy? Only the last letter she wrote she said she’d break her heart if I let you fall in love with anybody else. The men’s all fools now, anyhow, Andy, and some of them is bad, but don’t you go and desave that child, that’s a-breakin’ her heart afther you. And don’t ye believe as I ever keered a straw for ye, for I don’t keer fer you, nor no other man a-livin’.”