She--" Here his honour looked up sharply, and his reverence, pleased to have a better audience, chattered on:-- "Sure, your honour will remember Biddy McQuilkin, for she served at Knockowen when the little mistress there was born--" "Where's Biddy now ?" asked some one.

"She was never the same woman after her man died." "Ah, poor Biddy! When your honour parted with her she went to Paris to a situation; but I'm thinking she'd have done better to bide at home.
There's many an honest man in these parts would have been glad to meet a decent widow like Biddy.

I told her so before she went, but--" Here the fiddler struck up a jig, which cut short the gossip of the priest and made a diversion for his hearers.

Some of the young fellows and girls present fell to footing it, and called on Tim and me to join in.

But I was too much out of heart even to look on; and as for Tim, he glared as if he would have turned every one of them out of the cottage.
In the midst of the noise and the shouts of the dancers and the cheers of the onlookers, I crawled into the corner behind his honour's chair, and dropped asleep, to dream--strange to tell--not of my mother, or of his honour's turnips, or of the _Cigale_, but of Biddy McQuilkin of Kerry Keel, whom till now I had never seen or heard of.
When I awoke the daylight was struggling into the cabin, paling the candles that burned low beside my mother's bed.