as English people live in, with suites of magnificent rooms, and
crowds and crowds of respectably dressed servants, and that we have
carriages and horses. I have kept up this delusion; he must never
come over to see the nakedness of the land."

But now the fact that her Uncle George had never seen the nakedness
of the land, and that he was attached to her mother, and proud of
the fact that she had married an Irish gentleman of old descent,
kept visiting Nora again and again. If she could only see him! If
she could only beg of him to lend her father a little money just to
avert the crowning disgrace of all--the O'Shanaghgans leaving their
home because they could not afford to stop there, Nora thought, and
the wild idea which had crept into her head gathered strength.

"There is nothing for it; something desperate must be done," she
thought. "Father won't save himself, because he does not know how.
He will just drift on until a week of the fatal day, and then he
will have an illness. I cannot let father die; I cannot let his
heart be broken. I, Nora, will do something."

So one day she locked herself in her room. She stayed there for a
couple of hours, and when she came out again a letter was thrust
into her pocket. Nora was not a good letter-writer, and this one had
taken nearly two hours to produce. Tears had blotted its pages, and
the paper on which it was written was of the poorest, but it was
done at last. She put a stamp on it and ran downstairs. She went to
Hannah's cabin. Standing in front of the cabin was her small admirer
Mike. He was standing on his head with the full blaze of the
sunlight all over him, his ragged trousers had slipped down almost
to his knees, and his little brown bare legs and feet were twinkling