the sun was setting across the ocean, and the tame waves were only just
audible as they rippled on the stones below, she would sit there with
her child, holding the girl's hand or just touching her arm, and would
be content so to stay almost without a word; but when the winds blew,
and the heavy spray came up in blinding volumes, and the white-headed
sea-monsters were roaring in their fury against the rocks, she would be
there alone with her hat in her hand, and her hair drenched. She would
watch the gulls wheeling and floating beneath her, and would listen to
their screams and try to read their voices. She would envy the birds as
they seemed to be worked into madness by the winds which still were not
strong enough to drive them from their purposes. To linger there among
the rocks seemed to be the only delight left to her in life,--except
that intense delight which a mother has in loving her child. She herself
read but little, and never put a hand upon the piano. But she had a
faculty of sitting and thinking, of brooding over her own past years and
dreaming of her daughter's future life, which never deserted her. With
her the days were doubtless very sad, but it cannot truly be said that
they were dull or tedious.

And there was a sparkle of humour about her too, which would sometimes
shine the brightest when there was no one by her to appreciate it. Her
daughter would smile at her mother's sallies,--but she did so simply
in kindness. Kate did not share her mother's sense of humour,--did not
share it as yet. With the young the love of fun is gratified generally
by grotesque movement. It is not till years are running on that the
grotesqueness of words and ideas is appreciated. But Mrs. O'Hara would
expend her art on the household drudge, or on old Barney Corcoran who
came with the turf,--though by neither of them was she very clearly
understood. Now and again she would have a war of words with the
priest, and that, I think, she liked. She was intensely combative, if