Mrs Kelly had, after her husband's death, added a small grocer's
establishment to her inn. People wondered where she had found the means
of supplying her shop: some said that old Mick Kelly must have had
money when he died, though it was odd how a man who drank so much could
ever have kept a shilling by him. Others remarked how easy it was to
get credit in these days, and expressed a hope that the wholesale
dealer in Pill Lane might be none the worse. However this might be,
the widow Kelly kept her station firmly and constantly behind her
counter, wore her weeds and her warm, black, stuff dress decently and
becomingly, and never asked anything of anybody.

At the time of which we are writing, her two elder sons had left her,
and gone forth to make their own way, and take the burden of the world
on their own shoulders. Martin still lived with his mother, though his
farm lay four miles distant, on the road to Ballindine, and in another
county--for Dunmore is in County Galway, and the lands of Toneroe, as
Martin's farm was called, were in the County Mayo. One of her three
daughters had lately been married to a shop-keeper in Tuam, and rumour
said that he had got £500 with her; and Pat Daly was not the man to
have taken a wife for nothing. The other two girls, Meg and Jane, still
remained under their mother's wing, and though it was to be presumed
that they would soon fly abroad, with the same comfortable plumage
which had enabled their sister to find so warm a nest, they were
obliged, while sharing their mother's home, to share also her labours,
and were not allowed to be too proud to cut off pennyworths of tobacco,
and mix dandies of punch for such of their customers as still preferred
the indulgence of their throats to the blessing of Father Mathew.

Mrs. Kelly kept two ordinary in-door servants to assist in the work of
the house; one, an antiquated female named Sally, who was more devoted