In the meantime Mr. Blair had heard from Mr. Plunkett an account of the children's behavior, and at dinner that evening he spoke about it to Nessa.

"Mr. Plunkett does not know how to manage people," she said, after she had explained the story from the children's point of view. "It is a pity."

"Ah!" said her uncle, amused at the quaint gravity with which she announced her opinion.

"I do not like him," she continued. "He is hard. He is bad for the children."

"What! have you been thinking about it?" said her uncle. "You astonish me. I thought he was wonderfully good for the children."

"No," said Nessa, "because he does not understand them, and he does not like them. He makes them angry. I do not think it would be very difficult for these children to be good. Mr. Plunkett thinks that all they do is wrong; other people think that all is right. It is very bad for them to be so much scolded, and it is bad for them to be so much flattered."

"So Plunkett thinks all is wrong, does he?" asked Mr. Blair.

"Yes," said Nessa; "he does not see anything but the wrong, and he scolds the children. He makes them proud and angry; and then I think they like to do what he does not want."

"But, my dear child, they always like to do what I don't want," said her uncle. "Why do they always bang the doors? Why do they shout under my windows? Why do they get up at six o'clock and clatter up and down the passage when I am enjoying my soundest sleep? Answer me all these questions, little advocate."

"They bang the doors because they are always in a hurry," said Nessa, smiling. "They shout because they are happy. They get up early—well, the birds get up early, too."

"Well, well," replied her uncle, laughing, "have it your own way. But you must learn to appreciate Plunkett's other qualities. He saves me more trouble than twenty other men would do in his place."

"Perhaps he is very useful," said Nessa, "but he is not interesting."

"He is most interesting to me," returned Mr. Blair. "I have twenty pounds now for every ten I used to have, and he has succeeded in making the cottagers keep roofs on their houses, and conform to a few other customs of civilization. He has done it at the risk of his life, too," he continued, in a more serious tone. "More than one of the men about here would think it a praiseworthy action to shoot him some dark night. Plunkett knows it, and after all, your martyrs of the middle ages did not do so very much more than persevere in their duty when they knew it might cost them their life."

"Yes, that is brave," said Nessa, looking up.

Her uncle's words made Mr. Plunkett's character appear to her in a new light, but they gave her an unpleasant creeping sensation. She was beginning to think that Ireland was a very unsafe place to live in.

"Well," said her uncle, as they rose to leave the dining-room, "are you convinced now of Plunkett's excellent qualities?"

"Yes," replied Nessa, "but—"

"But what?"

"I do not think I could like him; he is not kind."

"Ah, you true woman!" replied Mr. Blair. "You won't acknowledge yourself beaten; but ask his little daughter Marion if he is not kind."

Instead of going to the drawing-room Nessa went straight to the schoolroom, but she found it empty. Soon the door of the schoolroom slowly opened, and Winnie entered singing, followed by Murtagh, who was playing the violin and singing too.

They did not see Nessa, who had withdrawn into the shadow of the curtain, but stood still together in a broad strip of moonlight near the table singing as though their whole souls were in a song. Winnie's head was thrown back, her face looked white, her eyes unnaturally large and dark in the strange light. Murtagh had bent his head to one side over the violin, and his face was in shadow.

Nessa stood entranced, watching the weird little figures. But as their voices rose to a strange sweet wail that formed the refrain, Murtagh's hand slipped. A sudden shriek of wrong notes was the result; both the children stopped singing, and he impatiently flung the violin on the table, exclaiming, "That's always the way when I'm just getting it best."

"There's a string gone, and that'll be sixpence to save up before we can have another singing night," remarked Winnie, ruefully, as a slight snap from the violin announced the mischief that had been done.

Nessa advanced from the window, and suggested that perhaps the string would be long enough to be used again.

"Are you there?" exclaimed Winnie, taking up the violin. "No; it's the same string that broke last time. Myrrh, I do wish you wouldn't pitch the violin about so; couldn't you remember to give it to me every time instead of throwing it down?"

"Especially," remarked Rosie, who had come in with Bobbo, "when it's all your fault. If you practised every day the way you promised mamma, you'd never make those horrid squeaks."

"Shut up!" said Murtagh, flinging himself down on the hearth-rug.

Winnie hovered about, watching Nessa's useless endeavors to make a short string long enough, and finally settled down upon the hearth-rug; while Rosie remarked that she was going to bed, and went away.

"You'll be throwing it in the river by mistake some of these nights, Murtagh," said Bobbo, "and that'll be an awful nuisance."

"Don't bother him!" said Winnie. "We are so tired."

"I'm sick and tired of everything," exclaimed Murtagh, presently. "Everything's wrong, whatever you do; I think I'd like to be nice and quietly dead, then things wouldn't be all so puzzling."

"I'm so tired now," said Winnie, wearily laying her head on a footstool, "that I think I'd like to be dead or anything where you don't feel."

"Poor children!" said Nessa, "you are tired out."

"It isn't being tired I mind," said Murtagh, "but it's so dreadfully difficult all about what's right and what's wrong. I cannot understand, and I wish—yes, I really do wish I was dead."

"But that is not brave," said Nessa, gently. "I do not think we need be afraid of our lives, because there is always so much good that we don't know of. I felt afraid when I had to come here, and now I am very happy after all."

"Yes, but," said Murtagh, "it isn't like that; only it does puzzle me so about the wrong sides of things. We were so wretched all the week trying to keep Theresa, and we couldn't laugh at anything, and when we woke up in the morning we thought about her the first thing. But then we thought we ought to keep her; we thought Rosie was talking nonsense. Well, afterwards, all of a sudden, we find out we were all wrong somehow!"

"Oh, no," said Nessa, "you were not all wrong. How can you say that when you were so kind and so brave?"

Murtagh's face brightened for a moment, but then he said: "Yes; but Winnie and I have been thinking, and it came right in the end because you helped us; but we didn't bring it right. We only made Mrs. Daly miserable, and Theresa miserable, and ourselves miserable. We wouldn't desert her because we always thought it was mean deserting people, and all the time Rosie was right; and it is very funny, being brave is worse than being cowardly."

"Ah," said Nessa, "but you are mistaking the part that was wrong. If you had been older, you would not have hidden Theresa in the island at all, because you would have known all the trouble it would bring; you would have come at once to Uncle Blair. But then you couldn't help not being older, and when you had hidden her there, much the best thing you could do was to be brave. If you had taken her back at first, you would never have got the money."

The explanation satisfied Murtagh for a moment, but then he said: "It wasn't our keeping her that got the money. If you hadn't been here, we could never have got it. And supposing it had done what Mr. Plunkett said; supposing it had killed Mrs. Daly?"

"I don't know how to explain," she said, "but I know I love you for doing as you did."

Bobbo sitting nearest her gave her hand a fervent squeeze. It was new and pleasant to them to be loved.

"And wait one moment," she continued; "I think now I can explain a little, too. You know we are not perfect, and the thing we have to do is to try and be as good as we can. We are quite sure to make mistakes, but I think we ought to be brave enough to go on trying, and then God is kind; he will let us have done most good by the time we have to stop. Don't you think so?"

"I think if you were always here, we should always do most good," said Murtagh, warmly.

And Nessa, changing her manner, laughed and kissed his forehead, saying: "Ah, you mad fellow, if I were always with you, I would not let you do so many foolish things, and you would wish me very far away."