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The consequences were what might have been expected. After his death the O'Conors of the west competed with both O'Neills and O'Briens for supremacy, and a chronic civil war prepared the path for Strongbow and the Normans.
Yet she smiled, drowsily happy, and then the room seemed to fill with a bright, warm light, and round the bed there danced a great Christmas wreath, made up of the faces of the three O'Neills, and the thin old rector, with his white hair, and pretty Rosamond, and frightened Miss Thrasher and the homesick girls, and lonely Miss Hyle, and tear-dimmed Hilma.
The O'Neills ever ready for a fray, and the nearest in point of distance to Scotland promptly made overtures to the Bruces, and Edward Bruce, the victorious king's brother, was despatched at the head of a large army, and landing in 1315 near Carrickfergus was at once joined by the O'Neills, and war proclaimed.
But fresh dissensions soon broke out between the sons and grandsons of Roderick, and the sons of his brother Thurlogh, in one of whose deadly conflicts sixteen Princes of the Sil-Murray fell. Both sides looked beyond Connaught for help; one drew friends from the northern O'Neills, another relied on the aid of O'Brien.
Their great great-grandson, Sir Algernon O'Neill, is fond of the water, too; but he takes to it in a splendid yacht, called the "Fanny Ellsler," with his delicate wife, the Lady Ginevra, who abhors the sea, and gets dreadfully sick always, but will take cruises, because the sea air is good for the little O'Neills, she says, because Queen Victoria has set the fashion, some people say.
She herself expected to be taken home by the O'Neills, but to her surprise she found her father waiting in the church vestibule. He said he had decided to come and hear the new minister, and Missy never suspected it was the unrest of a father who sees his little girl trying to become a big girl that had dragged him from his house-slippers and smoking-jacket this snowy evening.
Yes, Tess said it WAS the governess-cart; and her answer was as solemn as Missy's question. It was that same "dinner" at the "vicarage" in Cherryvale one dines at mid-day, and the Presbyterian minister blindly believed he had invited the O'Neills for supper that gave Tess one of her most brilliant inspirations. It came to her quite suddenly, as all true inspirations do.
Oh, misery!" Eleanor jerked a snarl of thread out on the floor. Betty had never cared for "Cork" but now the hot worried faces of its girls appealed to her. "Let me help. I'm a regular silkworm." The O'Neills assented with eagerness, and Betty began to sew in a capable, swift way that made the others stare and sigh with relief. The dolls were many, the O'Neills slow.
The Earl of Ormond enjoyed similar rights in Kilkenny and Tipperary, as did the Desmond family in the South, and the De Burgos in Connaught. The O'Neills, O'Donnells, O'Connors, McCarthys, O'Byrnes, and a host of minor chieftains, exercised ecclesiastical patronage in their respective territories.
The great chiefs came in readily enough; O'Connors, O'Briens, O'Neills, even the turbulent McMurrough himself, some seventy-five of them in all. The king entertained them sumptuously, as Henry II. had entertained their ancestors two centuries before. They engaged to be loyal, and to answer for the loyalty of their dependants with some mental reservations we must conclude.
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