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After Mrs. Bilkins, with a brow as severe as that of one of the Parcae, had closed the door upon the O’Rourkes that summer morning, she sat down on the stairs, and, sinking the indignant goddess in the woman, burst into tears. She was still very wroth with Margaret Callaghan, as she persisted in calling her; very merciless and unforgiving, as the gentler sex are apt to be–to the gentler sex. Mr. Bilkins, however, after the first vexation, missed Margaret from the household; missed her singing, which was in itself as helpful as a second girl; missed her hand in the preparation of those hundred and one nameless comforts which are necessities to the old, and wished in his soul that he had her back again. Who could make a gruel, when he was ill, or cook a steak, when he was well, like Margaret? So, meeting her one morning at the fish-market–for Mr. O’Rourke had long since given over the onerous labor of catching dinners–he spoke to her kindly, and asked her how she liked the change in her life, and if Mr. O’Rourke was good to her.

“Troth, thin, sur,” said Margaret, with a short, dry laugh, “he ‘s the divil’s own!”

Margaret was thin and careworn, and her laugh had the mild gayety of champagne not properly corked. These things were apparent even to Mr. Bilkins, who was not a shrewd observer.

“I ‘m afraid, Margaret,” he remarked sorrowfully, “that you are not making both ends meet.”

“Begorra, I ‘d be glad if I could make one ind meet!” returned Margaret.

With a duplicity quite foreign to his nature, Mr. Bilkins gradually drew from her the true state of affairs. Mr. O’Rourke was a very bad case indeed; he did nothing towards her support; he was almost constantly drunk; the little money she had laid by was melting away, and would not last until winter. Mr. O’Rourke was perpetually coming home with a sprained ankle, or a bruised shoulder, or a broken head. He had broken most of the furniture in his festive hours, including the cooking-stove. “In short,” as Mr. Bilkins said in relating the matter afterwards to Mrs. Bilkins, “he had broken all those things which he should n’t have broken, and failed to break the one thing he ought to have broken long ago–his neck, namely.”

The revelation which startled Mr. Bilkins most was this: in spite of all, Margaret loved Larry with the whole of her warm Irish heart. Further than keeping the poor creature up waiting for him until ever so much o’clock at night, it did not appear that he treated her with personal cruelty. If he had beaten her, perhaps she would have worshipped him. It needed only that.

Revolving Margaret’s troubles in his thoughts as he walked homeward, Mr. Bilkins struck upon a plan by which he could help her. When this plan was laid before Mrs. Bilkins, she opposed it with a vehemence that convinced him she had made up her mind to adopt it.

“Never, never will I have that ungrateful woman under this roof!” cried Mrs. Bilkins; and accordingly the next day Mr. and Mrs. O’Rourke took up their abode in the Bilkins mansion–Margaret as cook, and Larry as gardener.

“I ‘m convanient if the owld gintleman is,” had been Mr. O’Rourke’s remark, when the proposition was submitted to him. Not that Mr. O’Rourke had the faintest idea of gardening. He did n’t know a tulip from a tomato. He was one of those sanguine people who never hesitate to undertake anything, and are never abashed by their herculean inability.

Mr. Bilkins did not look to Margaret’s husband for any great botanical knowledge; but he was rather surprised one day when Mr. O’Rourke pointed to the triangular bed of lilies-of-the-valley, then out of flower, and remarked, “Thim ‘s a nate lot o’ pur-taties ye ‘ve got there, sur.” Mr. Bilkins, we repeat, did not expect much from Mr. O’Rourke’s skill in gardening; his purpose was to reform the fellow if possible, and in any case to make Margaret’s lot easier.