A Girl of High Adventure by L.T. Meade

While little Margot and "Herself" were engrossed over the two-months-old baby and Margot was expressing her intense delight that it was _really_ a very young baby -- "_proper_ young," she said, raising her deep, dark eyes to the young mother's face -- Fergus Desmond was giving way to a certain amount of anger. He was a good fellow, one of the best in Ireland, but he was eaten up with an Irishman's pride and he did not want his little niece to be "hail-fellow-well-met" even with so good a man as Phinias Maloney.

A slight consideration, however, caused him to see the absurdity of these feelings. He had no cause to abuse poor Phinias, who was one of his own father's best tenants. The frown, therefore, smoothed away from his brow and he walked beside Phinias into one of the meadows at the back of the tumble-down farm.