Conspicuous amongst the girls in the district in which our story sojourns, were, as a matter of course, Winny Cavana and Kate Mulvey, with some others of their neighbors who have not been mentioned, and who need not be.
Winny, since the little episode respecting her refusal of Tom Murdock, and his subsequent departure, had led a very quiet, meditative life. She could not help remarking to herself, however, that she had somehow or other become still more intimate with Kate Mulvey than she had used to be; but for this she could not account--though, perhaps, the reader can. She had always been upon terms of intimacy with Kate; had frequently called there, when time would permit, and sat for half an hour, or sometimes an hour, chatting, which was always reciprocated by Kate, whose time was more on her own hands. In what then consisted the increase of intimacy can hardly be said. Perhaps it merely existed in Winny's own wish that it should be so, and the fact that one and the other, on such occasions, now always threw a cloak round her shoulders and accompanied her friend a piece of the way home. Sometimes, when the day was tempting, a decided walk would be proposed, and then the bonnet was added to the cloak. What formed the burden of their conversation in these chats, which to a close observer might be said latterly to have assumed a confidential appearance, must be so evident to the reader's capacity, that no mystery need be observed on the subject. To say the least, Emon-a-knock came in for a share of it, and, as a matter of almost necessity, Tom Murdock was not altogether left out.
Kate Mulvey, after the _éclaircissement_ with Winny, believed she could do her friend some good without doing herself any harm, a principle on which alone most people will act. With this view she took an early opportunity to hint something to Emon of the result of the interview between herself and Winny, and although she did it in a very casual, and at the same time a clever, manner, she began to fear that so far as her friend's case was concerned, she had done more harm than good. The fact of Tom Murdock's proposal and rejection subsequent to the interview adverted to, had not become public amongst the neighbors; and before Winny had an opportunity of telling it to Kate, Emon had left his father's house, to seek employment in the north. It is not unlikely that he was tempted to this step by something which had fallen from Kate Mulvey respecting Winny and Tom Murdock, although the whole cat had not yet got out of the bag.