Chapter VIII

He’s been always a good son, Pat, an’ the wife, there’s no fau’t in his wife,
Sure she’s doin’ her best to keep house sin’ me ould woman lost her life;
But the throuble she’s had--och! the crathur, small blame to her now if she’d think
It was time they were quit of a wan fit for nought save to ait an’ to dhrink.
For whiles, whin she’s washin’ the praties, or cuttin’ the childher’s bread,
I know be the look of her face she’s rememb’rin’ the child that’s dead;
The littlest, that died in last winther, and often afore it died
Did be askin’ its mammy for bread, an’ thin, ’cause she’d none, it cried;
An’ the Docther he said ’twas the hunger had kilt it; an’ that was the case:
Ye could see thro’ its wee bits of hands, an’ its eyes were as big as its face.
An’ whiles whin I’m aitin’ me crust, _I’ll_ be thinkin’ to hear it cry--
But _she_, that’s the mother who bore it--who’d blame her? In throth not I.
Och! but that was the terrible winther, an’ like to ha’ starved us outright;
Ne’er a hungrier saison I mind since the first o’ the pratie blight;
An’ whine’er wan’s no call to be hungry, it’s three times as hungry wan feels,
An’ so I that worked never a sthroke, I did always be great at me meals.
Yet I spared thim the most that I could, for o’ nights whin I noticed our heap
O’ praties looked small in the pot, I’d let on I was fast asleep;
So Molly she’d spake to the childher, an’ bid thim to whisht an’ be quite,
For if gran’daddy sted on asleep, he’d be wantin’ no supper that night;
Thin, the crathurs, as cautious an’ cute as the mice they’d all keep whin they heard,
An’ to think that the little childher’d sit watchin’, not darin’ a word,
But hush-hushin’ wan to the other, for fear I might happin to wake
And ait up their morsel o’ food--sure me heart ’ud be ready to break.