Those half-dozen fellows, who in a century or so contrive to work their way up to something, make a sort of precedent, and tell the others what they might be if they but knew how.
'I'm not vain enough to suppose I am one of these, and it is quite plain that she does not think me so.' He pondered long over this thought, and then suddenly cried aloud, 'Is it possible she may read Joe Atlee in this fashion?
is that the stuff out of which she hopes to make a hero ?' There was more bitterness in this thought than he had first imagined, and there was that of jealousy in it too that pained him deeply.
Had she preferred either of the two Englishmen to himself, he could have understood and, in a measure, accepted it.

They were, as he called them, 'swells.' They might become, he knew not what.

The career of the Saxon in fortune was a thing incommensurable by Irish ideas; but Joe was like himself, or in reality less than himself, in worldly advantages.
This pang of jealousy was very bitter; but still it served to stimulate him and rouse him from a depression that was gaining fast upon him.

It is true, he remembered she had spoken slightingly of Joe Atlee.

Called him noisy, pretentious, even vulgar; snubbed him openly on more than one occasion, and seemed to like to turn the laugh against him; but with all that she had sung duets with him, corrected some Italian verses he wrote, and actually made a little sketch in his note-book for him as a souvenir.