“One evening he went down to the house. Julia’s people were well-to-do people, they kept a grocery- store in the village; and when he came into the shop who should be there but the richest farmer in the country, Michael Moran by name, trying to get Julia for his wife. He didn’t go straight to Julia and that’s what swept him. There are two counters in that shop, and Julia was at the one on the left as you go in. And many’s the pound she had made for her parents at that counter. Michael Moran says to the father, ‘Now, what fortune are you going to give with Julia?’ And the father says there was many a man who would take her without any; and that’s how they spoke, and Julia listening quietly all the while at the opposite counter. For Michael didn’t know what a spirited girl she was, but went on arguing till he got the father to say fifty pounds, and thinking he had got him so far he said, ‘I’ll never drop a flap to her unless you give the two heifers.’ Julia never said a word, she just sat listening. It was then that the priest came in. And over he goes to Julia. ‘And now,’ says he, ‘aren’t you proud to hear that you’ll have such a fine fortune, and it’s I that’ll be glad to see you married, for I can’t have any more of your goings- on in my parish. You’re the encouragement of the dancing and courting here, but I’m going to put an end to it.’ Julia didn’t answer a word, and he went over to them that were arguing about the sixty pounds. ‘Now, why not make it fifty-five?’ says he. So the father agreed to that, since the priest had said it, and all three of them thought the marriage was settled. ‘Now what will you be taking, Father Tom?’ says Cahill, ‘and you, Michael?’ Sorra one of them thought of asking her if she was pleased with Michael; but little did they know what was passing in her mind, and when they came over to the counter to tell her what they had settled, she said, ‘Well, I’ve just been listening to you, and ’tis well for you to be wasting your time talking about me,’ and she tossed her head, saying she would just pick the boy out of the parish that pleased her best. And what angered the priest most of all was her way of saying it—that the boy that would marry her would be marrying herself and not the money that would be paid when the book was signed or when the first baby was born. Now it was agin girls marrying according to their fancy that Father Madden had set himself. He had said in his sermon the Sunday before that young people shouldn’t be allowed out by themselves at all, but that the parents should make up the marriages for them. And he went fairly wild when Julia told him the example she was going to set. He tried to keep his temper, sir, but it was getting the better of him all the while. And Julia said, ‘My boy isn’t in the parish now, but maybe he is on his way here, and he may be here to-morrow or the next day.’ And when Julia’s father heard her speak like that he knew that no one would turn her from what she was saying, and he said, ‘Michael Moran, my good man, you may go your way: you will never get her.’ Then he went back to hear what Julia was saying to the priest, but it was the priest that was talking. ‘Do you think,’ says he, ‘I am going to let you go on turning the head of every boy in the parish? Do you think’, says he, ‘I’m going to see you gallivanting with one and then with the other? Do you think I am going to see fighting and quarreling for your like? Do you think I am going to hear stories like I heard last week about poor Patsy Carey, who has gone out of his mind, they say, on account of your treatment? No’, says he, ‘I’ll have no more of that. I’ll have you out of my parish, or I’ll have you married.’ Julia didn’t answer the priest; she tossed her head, and went on making up parcels of tea and sugar, and getting the steps and taking down candles, though she didn’t want them, just to show the priest that she didn’t mind what he was saying. And all the while her father trembling, not knowing what would happen, for the priest had a big stick, and there was no saying that he wouldn’t strike her. Cahill tried to quiet the priest, he promising him that Julia shouldn’t go out any more in the evenings, and bedad, sir, she was out the same evening with a young man and the priest saw them, and the next evening she was out with another and the priest saw them, nor was she minded at the end of the month to marry any of them. Then the priest went down to the shop to speak to her a second time, and he went down again a third time, though what he said the third time no one knows, no one being there at the time. And next Sunday he spoke out, saying that a disobedient daughter would have the worst devil in hell to attend on her. I’ve heard tell that he called her the evil spirit that set men mad. But most of the people that were there are dead or gone to America, and no one rightly knows what he did say, only that the words came out of his mouth, and the people when they saw Julia crossed themselves, and even the boys that were most mad after Julia were afraid to speak to her. Cahill had to put her out.”

“Do you mean to say that the father put his daughter out?”