The head of the family was a man of forty, and he was the trusted
servant, almost the friend, of the young master, he was his
bailiff and his steward, and he lived in a pretty cottage by the
edge of the lake. O'Dwyer's aunts, they were old women, of sixty-
eight and seventy, lived in the Big House, the elder had been
cook, and the younger housemaid, and both were now past their
work, and they lived full of gratitude to the young master, to
whom they thought they owed a great deal. He believed the debt to
be all on his side, and when he was away he often thought of them,
and when he returned home he went to greet them as he might go to
the members of his own family. The family of the O'Dwyer's was
long lived, and Betty and Mary had a sister far older than
themselves, Margaret Kirwin, "Granny Kirwin," as she was called,
and she lived in the cottage by the lake with her nephew, Alec
O'Dwyer. She was over eighty, it was said that she was nearly
ninety, but her age was not known exactly. Mary O'Dwyer said that
Margaret was nearly twenty years older than she, but neither Betty
nor Mary remembered the exact date of their sister's birth. They
did not know much about her, for though she was their sister, she
was almost a stranger to them. She had married when she was
sixteen, and had gone away to another part of the country, and
they had hardly heard of her for thirty years. It was said that
she had been a very pretty girl, and that many men had been in
love with her, and it was known for certain that she had gone away
with the son of the game keeper of the grandfather of the present
Mr.
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