My grandfather talked freely in my presence; and I knew that Aghadoe
Abbey was mortgaged to the doors and that the mortgages would be
foreclosed at my grandfather's death. They kept nothing from me, and my
grandmother has said to me with a watery smile: "If I survive your
grandfather, Bawn, my dear, you and I will have to find genteel lodgings
in Dublin. It would be a strange thing for a Lady St. Leger to come down
from Aghadoe Abbey to that. To be sure there was once a Countess went
ballad-singing in the streets of Cork."

"That day is far away," I answered. "And when it comes there will be no
genteel lodgings, but Theobald and I will take care of you somewhere.
In a little house it may be, but one with a garden where you can walk in
the sun in winter mornings as you do now, and prod at the weeds in the
path as you do now with your silver-headed cane."

"If I could survive your grandfather," she said, turning away her head,
"my heart would break to leave Aghadoe. I ask nothing of you and
Theobald, Bawn, but that you should take care of each other when we are
gone. It is not right that the old should burden the young."

I have always known, or at least since I was capable of entertaining
such things, that our grandparents destined Theobald and me for each
other. I have no love for Theobald such as I find in my books, but I
have a great affection for him as the dearest of brothers.

I have not said before that he is a soldier. What else should he be but
a soldier? Since there have always been soldiers in the family, and my
grandfather could not have borne him to be anything else.

Dear Theobald, how brave and simple and kind he was!