that she was the untrammelled owner of a soundly-invested fifteen
thousand pounds, that she was the aunt whom Dr. Mangan delighted to
honour, combined with the allied fact that she had paid for the hiring
of the picnic-bearing wagonette, gave her an importance that could be
undervalued only by one as ignorant of the greater concerns of life as
was Christian. Mrs. Cantwell accepted the companionship of the
youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry as no more than her due, and the thought
that compassion had prompted its bestowal, was very far from her mind.
None the less, the Noah's Ark principles that governed implicitly, if
not ostensibly Cluhir entertainments of this nature, were firmly
embedded in her being, and she was entirely aware of the furtive
presence of Barty, at the rear of the procession of which she and
Christian formed the last couple.

"Now, my dear," she observed, while she and Christian paced side by
side, along the river path, "you shouldn't be wasting time on an old
woman like me! When I was young, we'd have called this a Two and Two
party, and I promise you that the likes o' you and me wouldn't have
been reckoned a proper couple at all! Not when _I_ was a girl!"

"_I_ should have said that you and I were irreproachably proper,
Mrs. Cantwell," responded Christian, gaily; "it isn't very kind of you
to say that we aren't behaving as we should!" She laughed into Mrs.
Cantwell's old face, and she, being quite unused to girls who took the
trouble to flirt with her, began to think that Frankie Mangan (thus
she designated her nephew, the doctor) was right when he said that the
youngest of the Talbot-Lowrys was the best of the bunch.

"Ho! Ho! Ho!" she said, with a laugh like the whinny of an old horse;
"it's a long time since I kicked my heels over anything higher than a