“Where's the good of talking to me of a dance, or any thing of the sort?” said Kathleen Ryley, raising her clear blue eyes to the good-natured countenance of Philip Murphy: “sure ye know my pumps aren't come home – nor, more betokens, won't be till Saturday night; and Saint Patrick himself couldn't cut a step in such brogues as them.”

Kate was, in very truth, a frank-hearted, merry girl, with laughing blue eyes, a joyous countenance, and a sweet, love-sounding voice – one whom sorrow had shadowed, but could not cloud. Her father, a respectable farmer, had the misfortune to lose a sensible, industrious wife, when Kathleen was not more than fourteen; leaving him, besides his eldest daughter, five young, troublesome children. Every body pitied Mark Ryley: every body said, “he must marry again; Kate was too young and too giddy to manage such a household.” – Everybody, however, was wrong. Mark Ryley did not marry again, and Kate did manage his household. And, in sooth, it was a beautiful sight – a sight that may be often vainly sought in nobler dwellings – to observe the filial and sisterly tenderness of the simple Irish lass. Kathleen was considered a pretty maiden by all who knew her, and her mother had bestowed extraordinary pains upon her daughter's apparel; but matters changed when the poor woman died; the fine gingham frocks, and Sunday tippets, were cut and manufactured, by Kate's own hands, into holiday dresses for her two little sisters: daily did she send them to the village school, and never permit either to remain at home, to assist her in her labours, which, certainly, were not light. Then her three brothers occasioned her much trouble; such clipping and shaping of jackets – which after all, in fashionable parlance, would have been denominated shapeless – such patching of shirts, and eternal mending of Sunday stockings! It was at once her pride and pleasure that her father's comforts should be as well cared for as during her mother's lifetime; and, even to the public-house (where it is but justice to state, his visits were seldom made), his daughter's influence extended; for thither would she follow, and so wile him homeward, that the neighbours declared, ‘of all girls in the world, sweet Kathleen Ryley had the most winning way.’