Chapter II (1)

It was early in July when her neighbours discovered the Widow Farrell’s wonderful age, and three months later found her beginning almost to look the character of a bi-centenarian, so bent, wizened and decrepit had she grown. Not that anything definite ailed her: the change was wrought partly by her own melancholy imaginations, and partly by other people’s alarming speeches. She told herself that she needn’t expect to have the use of her limbs any while longer, and everybody she met told her how surprising it was to see her able to be going about at all; and the consequence was that she daily felt herself becoming more feeble and incapable. On Sunday mornings she sometimes cheered up a bit, because she could not help feeling flattered by all the attention she received as she climbed the steep boreen to Mass, among a troop of sympathetic acquaintances, who contended with one another for the privilege of offering so distinguished a personage an arm. But even then she heard and overheard many observations which, however kindly meant, were by no means encouraging, and through the long week, when she lacked any such excitement, she sat brooding and moping, until her strength waned with her spirits. Out of doors she seldom stirred.

One mild autumn afternoon, however, the mellow golden light tempted her to lift her old shawl over her head and creep as far as the John Phelans, who lived close by, just across a loop of smooth firm sand at the mouth of a boreen. Down this a stream of people had been wending on their way back from Rathcroskery fair, and as several of them had turned into the Phelans’ kitchen, the widow arrived amid quite a large party of neighbours. Nannie Phelan, maiden sister to the man of the house, welcomed her kindly, and sat down with her in a quiet corner, noticing that the old woman looked what she would have described as “skeery and desolit like.”

“Sure, I dunno is there one thing amiss wid me more than the other,” Mrs Farrell explained lugubriously, “only I was dramin’ all last night a dale about the little round musheroons we did be gettin’ in the fields at home, and they made me think of me sisther Rose, that had an oncommon fancy for them ever. I’d bring her any ones I could find, and she’d be puttin’ them in among the hot ashes for to broil. I mind the smell of them this minyit, and she pokin’ them out wid a bit of stick, and sittin’ cocked up on the end of th’ ould settle a-nibblin’ of them, the crathur, like a wild rabbit wid a weeny white turnip stole for itself. I’m thinkin’ it’s maybe a sort of sign.”

“She’s away this great while, I should suppose? The Lord be good to her,” Nannie said with interest. It was a new departure for Mrs Farrell to mention this long-vanished elder sister, of whose very existence many of her friends had never heard.

“Ay is she that,” she replied to Nannie, “for what else would she be after all this while? And Christy Dann as well--the back of me hand to him; nobody thought anythin’ of them Danns. But sorra tale or tidings ever I got of what become of her since then. I dunno if any of them did at home, and I question would they let on to me even so, they were that mad about it all. Many’s the time I would be frettin’ and wonderin’, for I always had a great wish for poor Rose ever since I was no size to spake of. As pretty as anythin’ she was, and rael good-nathured. ’Twas twinty-siven pities--But sure it was to be, and belike it’s all one now which of them she took.”

“What happint her, ma’am?” Nannie inquired eagerly; but before she could be answered the open door all at once admitted sounds of such shouting and clattering and trampling that curiosity about the immediate present expelled curiosity about the remoter past, and she rushed out like the rest to see what was going on.

Everybody considered that if Joe Mulcahy had not taken more than was good for him he would never have trotted his horse and car down the steep and deep-rutted boreen; and nobody thought it otherwise than very natural that the result of his rashness was an upset at the foot of the hill. The horse tripped, and Joe and his two fares were pitched off. But they all fell softly, and only the harness was damaged. While it was a-mending with fishing-line the stranger passengers were invited to take a seat at the Phelans’ fire, the circle round which was thus enlarged by the addition of a middle-aged, black-bearded gentleman in light grey, and a little girl in navy blue with a curly-feathered hat.

Elderly Terence Lalor from Moyloughlin, who was visiting his married sister, Mrs Phelan, under-took, as the person of most consequence present, to entertain the new-comer, whose “furrinness” appeared plainly in his accent, even before he remarked, in the course of conversation, that he had had little experience of side-cars, as they were pretty considerable scarce on the streets of New York City, which he had but lately left.

“They’re the quare ould awkward yokes, bedad,” Terence asserted with polite self-depreciation. “’Tis only in a poor, backward counthry people would be bothered usin’ them at all. We ourselves has to make a shift wid them to be gettin’ to fairs and funerals and such. Deed now I mind the big loads there did be on our ould rattlethrap at home of a Sunday mornin’, drivin’ over to Mass at Cranmore; and, by the same token, I mind me poor mother had a sayin’ that a jauntin’-car was a terrible secret-thrap. For, says she, the people sittin’ back to back on the two sates might be talkin’ away about diff’rint things, widout a notion that e’er a word ’ud get across the well from one side to the other. But then maybe all of a suddint the horse ’ud come to a stand, or throt over a soft place, where there wasn’t a sound of his feet or the wheels, and wid that every word they were sayin’ ’ud rise up clear on the air, before they could stop themselves spakin’ loud, like as if they intinded it for the whole of Ireland. Begob, I knew that to happen meself before now. But most whiles, when you’re peltin’ along the hard road, you couldn’t tell what anybody might be sayin’ or doin’ on the far side, more especially if there was e’er a big box, or a couple of sacks, or anythin’ sizeable, sittin’ stuck up between yous on the well. There’s a story I’m hearin’ all the days of me life shows the truth of that same, sir; and morebetoken you was passin’ the very place it happint to-day, drivin’ over here from Moyloughlin, as you was a-sayin’.”

“So we did, sir,” said the stranger, “and I seldom ran across a lonelier-looking prospect than you have lying around most of the way.”

“Well, sir,” said Terence, “it was before me own recollection altogether, but I wisht I had a pound-note for every time I heard tell of it. ’Twas when the Carmodys of Moyloughlin, very respectable, dacint people, that are all gone now, were after makin’ up a match for the eldest daughter wid a strong farmer of the name of Lawrence M‘Nelis, that owned a good bit of land, and was a warm man. But this Rose Carmody couldn’t abide the thoughts of him at all. The work of the world they had gettin’ her persuaded, and in the end nothin’ ’ud suit her but she’d be married away over at Carrick, where her grandmother lived. So to satisfy her they settled it that way, and the day before the weddin’ she and her father set off drivin’ to Carrick on their car, wid herself on the one side and a big box of new clothes beside her, and her father on the other sate, and the well between them piled up high wid a cartload of things belongin’ to Rose that they were bringin’ over. Well and good, sir, they come as far as a cross-roads you might remimber, where the Carrick road turns off the bog, and there’s a collection of quare big lumps of boulder-stones scattered just in the corner. And thereabouts ould Carmody and the driver seen another car standin’ a bit down the Kilanure road wid nobody mindin’ it; so they passed the remark that that was no way to be lavin’ it; and that was all they noticed then. But when they got to Carrick, sorra a bit of Rose was on the car, and sight nor light they ever seen of the girl agin. For what did she do, if you plase, but took and slipped herself off unbeknownst there at the cross corner, where Christy Dann was waitin’ for her, lurkin’ behind the big stones--a young rapscallion widout a brass bawbee to his name that she took a fancy to--and away wid the pair of them to the States before man or baste could purvint it. Finely distracted her people were, that’s sartin. But what become of her nobody knows from that good day to this--Any more than I know what the mischief you’re riefin’ the sleeve out of me coat for, Kate. Is it wantin’ anythin’ you are?”

“If you had aught better than a pair of ould owl’s eyes in the ass’s head of you, ’tisn’t makin’ a fool of yourself you’d be tellin’ stories agin the Carmodys and ould Widdy Farrell sittin’ fornint you listenin’ to the whole of it,” his sister remonstrated in an indignant whisper.

But his attention, and indeed everybody else’s, was diverted to the American gentleman, who had jumped up and stood facing the semi-circle of neighbours with an air of no small importance and excitement.

“I’ll tell you what’s become of her, sir--you and all your friends,” he said. “She’s alive and well this day in her son’s house on Congress Avenue, Corneliusville, the widow of a highly-respected citizen, and the grandmother of myself, Christopher P. Dann. I was named for my paternal grandfather. Yes, sir, he mayn’t have been very flush of cash at the time when he carried off Rose Carmody from the folk who were for buying, and selling, and breaking her heart among them all, but he made his pile out West, and left a good business to his children and his children’s children. Often she’s told me how she slithered off the car and crawled on her hands and knees through the furze bushes, afraid of her life that her father might look behind him before she got to the shelter of the big stones. And she’s never regretted it, she claims, not for half-an-hour. But now I’ll trouble you to present me to the Widow Farrell that good lady mentioned, for it was to look her up that I’ve driven over from Moyloughlin, where I called at the Carmody house and could get no information relating to any member of the family, except the Widow Farrell of Clochranbeg--my great-aunt Norah, I take it, born Carmody.”

“Well I declare to goodness if that doesn’t bate anythin’ ever was! And here’s Mrs Farrell herself--step along, woman alive,” Nannie Phelan said, pushing forward the widow.

“Musha then, you done well, sir, to not be delayin’ any longer, if that’s what you’re after,” said Matt Caffrey. “When a body comes to be goin’ on for a couple of hunderd year ould it stands to raison them that’s intendin’ to visit her has a right to set their best foot foremost.”

“Indeed it’s a very ould, ould crathur I am, sir,” the widow said in her tremulous high piping; “a hunderd and fifty year’s a quare great age for a lone widdy woman to be lastin’ to, wid ne’er a one left in this world. And it’s true for them that I’m apt to quit very prisently. Sure I’m scarce able to stand on me two feet these times, let alone walkin’. But what talk have you about me sister, Rose Carmody. Och, but that was the notorious young villin to entice her away from us. How-an-e’er, it’s oulder agin than meself she was, and in her clay she is this many a long year, God save us all; ay is she, for sure.”

“You’re wrong there, ma’am,” said Mr Christopher Dann, beginning to shake hands with her vigorously. “As I stated, she’s alive and well; has never had a day’s sickness since I knew her, and that’s over forty years. But as for the advanced age you claim, Aunt Norah, you’re mistaken there again; you put it at too large a figure by a very long chalk. Why, it’s some seventy odd years since my grandfather and grandmother Dann crossed the fish-pond, and she says she left the sister Norah, that she’s talking about all the time, only a little slip of a girl of ten or eleven. So if you’re eighty-five, ma’am, this day, it’s the very most you can total up to. Grandmother Dann herself’s something just short of ninety, and a fine woman still. If you’ll excuse the remark, I think she’s better preserved than yourself--fresher and robuster looking. But there’s considerable of a family likeness all the same. Rosette, come here and tell me whether this old lady reminds you of anyone at home.”

The little girl, who seemed to be about seven years old, came and stared hard for a moment with very large dark blue eyes, which were overcast occasionally by a drift of soft black hair. “Why, certainly,” she said with confidence, “if she had a red shawl, and not such wide ruffles to her cap, she’d be a little like great-grandma Dann.”

“That’s so. What Miss Rosette Dann misses seeing correctly don’t amount to a lot,” her father said with pride. “But, talking of the shawl, don’t you feel like fetching it out of the strap on the brown handbag over there by the door?”

As Rosette ran off Mrs Farrell said: “Woman dear, I give you me word she’s the livin’ moral of me sisther; the very eyes of her, and the toss of her head to keep the hair out of them. Me brothers would be sayin’: ‘Way there, Captain,’ to her, and biddin’ her stand steady, lettin’ on ’twas our ould plough-horse she was like. Well now, to think of me behouldin’ such a thing, and gettin’ news of Rose, after all the frettin’ I had and wonderin’ what was become of her, and if it’s drownded she was crossin’ over the water, or starved dead maybe rovin’ about the world wid that young miscreant--beggin’ your pardon, sir, if he was somethin’ to you, but it’s dog’s abuse we did always be givin’ Christy Dann. And so Rose is all this while livin’ grand in the States, and no such outlandish ages on the two of us whatever. They had me torminted here, sir, addin’ up this way and that way till they found out I’m the ouldest ever was. Scarce the heart I’d have to be as much as throwin’ their bit of food to me poor hins, when I’d be thinkin’ of the show I was makin’ of meself livin’ that onnathural len’th of time. But now--it’s as surprisin’ as can be.”

Yet she considered it a degree more surprising a moment afterwards when Rosette returned with an ample shawl overflowing her short arms, and was helped by her father to wrap her great-grand-aunt in the soft, scarlet cashmere folds. They made of the little old woman an object more brilliant than the red sods’ glimmer through the dusky room, as her friends clustered round her, testing the fabric with finger and thumb, exclaiming and conjecturing about price and material. Rosette, however, planted herself in front of the widow, and looked fixedly at her for a minute or two. “Was it you really that used to bring great-grandma the cunning little musheroons?” she said at last. “I wish you’d show me where they grow, I’d like to find some myself.”

“There, that’s me drame,” said Mrs Farrell, clapping her hand impressively on Nannie Phelan’s arm. “Didn’t I tell you it was a sign of somethin’? ’Deed, jewel, I’m afeard it’s a trifle late in the saison for musheroons, but there might be an odd few yet in the high fields up above me house. I’ll skyte up wid you to thry is there, and welcome.”

“Is your house near by?” said Rosette, “for I guess we might go round there and have tea. We’ve brought it in a hamper, because father said we didn’t know what circumstances the Carmody family might be in. And I think _these_ circumstances are real poky and smoky. Father can carry the hamper; it’s heavy.”

Miss Rosette Dann was a young person whose wishes were complied with as a rule. She might presently have been seen crossing the curved sweep of sand towards Mrs Farrell’s cottage, walking hand-in-hand with her great-grand-aunt, at a brisk rate, enlivened by skips and hops, to which the old woman adapted her paces quite nimbly and cheerfully.

Towards dusk that evening Mrs Doherty called on Mrs Hickey in a state of serious perturbation. “I’m after gettin’ a quare turn,” she said, “for I looked in just now at the Widdy Farrell’s door on me way up here, thinkin’ she might be apt to be after takin’ a wakeness. And if I did, there was the ould crathur dressed out in I dunno what sort of deminted red rags, dancin’ her steps like a three-year-ould--a jig, if you plase--in the middle of the floor, wid a couple of strange people, as well as I could see, sittin’ inside and laughin’ at her; tinker tramps belike. It’s daft entirely the poor ould body’s gone.”

“Sorra a bit daft is she,” said Mrs Hickey. “Didn’t you hear tell? Sure there’s some people belongin’ to her just after landin’ over here from the States, and they as rich as Jews; and accordin’ to what they say the sisther of her that run away from her own weddin’ this great while back’s livin’ out there yet as fit as a fiddler; and it’s all a mistake about the widdy herself bein’ any wonderful ould age to spake of. The American gentleman says ’twas her grandmother owned the prayer-book wid her name in it, and he knows the Widdy wasn’t so much as born for better than forty year after the war about the tay. She’s raison to dance jigs bedad. They brought her the iligantist shawl you ever witnessed.”

“It’s well to be her,” said Mrs Doherty. “But here am I braggin’ away this day to everybody at the fair that we had the wonderfulest ould ancient woman at all livin’ here in Clochranbeg. And now it seems she’s no oulder than plinty of other people.”

“Ah well, she won’t be so one of these days,” said Mrs Hickey, “if she lives long enough.”

And with that consideration Clochranbeg has so far had to remain content.

THE HINS’ HOUSEKEEPER

Biddy M‘Gowran felt herself to be a person of no small importance when her grandmother had fairly set off to market and she could contemplate her own morning’s work. She expected to be extremely busy, and well she might, as her task was nothing less than the “redding up” of their kitchen, which she rightly thought in bad need of such an operation. The mistake she made was in assuming that it could be satisfactorily performed by the hands and wits of seven years old.

Biddy had arrived at Kilanure only the day before, having hitherto lived with her other grandmother in a gate-lodge a long way off. Both her parents had always been dead, it seemed to her, though her grandmothers did talk as if the trouble had happened quite a short time ago. The gate-lodge she had just left was a highly ornamental one, with a little terrace of coloured tiles round it, and stained glass in the Gothic porch-windows, and all things about it were kept very spick and span. A girl came up from the village once a week to wash and scrub, and whatever could be polished was polished, and whatever could not be was dusted every day.

Why this Kilanure grandmother, whom she had so seldom seen, should now have come to fetch her away, Biddy did not know; but as she was told that she should return “one of these fine days,” she started happily enough, while little, old Mrs Nolan stood under the porch, shaking her head sorrowfully in the cold March sunlight.

On their journey to Kilanure her new granny, as Biddy called her, had spoken much about her son Larry, Biddy’s poor father, who, she said, had been the best son in Ireland, and the finest figure of a young man in the County Donegal. Whereas old granny had often talked of her daughter, little Molly, who used to be the prettiest girl in five parishes, and the best daughter that ever lived in this world--God be good to them all.

“And a grand worker poor Larry was,” Mrs M‘Gowran now had repeated more than once. “Ne’er a lazy bone had he in his body; I’ll say that for him.”

This phrase stuck in Biddy’s mind, and it was chiefly a wish to prove herself a worthy daughter of such an industrious father that made her so eager to set about doing something without delay. But there were other reasons too. She was really shocked at the grimy aspect of the kitchen, as far as she could see it, for perpetual twilight dwelt behind the two tiny windows with their panes of dusty greenish glass and beetle brows of sloping grey thatch. The state of the floor struck her particularly; it felt gritty and rough underfoot, as if incrusted with dried mud. Biddy wondered how it could have got into such a condition. The scrubbing girl, she conjectured, might not have come this week, so that granny had no one to help her except grandfather and Uncle Joe, who of course were not of any use--at all events indoors.

Biddy had often thought, as she watched Meg Hoey working at home, that it must be very delightful to have command of a great bucket filled with foaming suds, and a piece of brown soap for the making of more, besides a cloth and a brush, and liberty to splash and slop all over the shiny tiles or snowy boards. But Meg always refused to let her try, on the grounds that she would be only destroying her clean frock and delaying other people at their work. All this somehow made it now seem quite clear to Biddy that she should set about cleaning up as soon as ever she had the house to herself, and thus be able to surprise her grandparents with the improvement upon their return. She had indeed already rather surprised her grandmother by the alacrity with which she agreed that the walk to market was too far, and her vehemence in declaring that she would not be a bit lonely by herself until her grandfather came in to his dinner at one o’clock. So Mrs M‘Gowran started on her long trudge, reflecting that poor Larry’s little girl seemed to be a good, biddable child; her husband went off with Joe to their field-work, having told Biddy that she was the grandest little housekeeper alive; and Biddy found herself at last blissfully alone. She was strenuously bent upon deserving that character.

Her first requirements were some water and a bucket, and she had the good fortune to find them both at once, in the shape of a battered old zinc pail, nearly full, standing at the back door. She resolved to be content with cold water, for the black, soot-shagged kettle on the hearth was almost as big as herself, and she had sense enough not to try lifting it. Brush and cloth must next be sought; but here Biddy had less luck, as no semblance of the former appeared anywhere, and the nearest approach to the latter that she lit upon was a blue checked linen fabric lying folded on the window-seat. To the unprejudiced eye it was quite evidently an apron; however, since there were two rather large holes in it she gladly decided that it could be good for nothing except a floor-cloth; and when she had torn it across to make it a more convenient size it certainly did look like nothing better than a rag. Then, after a long and anxious quest she found, in a broken tea-pot on the dresser, a piece of soap, disappointingly thin, it is true. Still she thought it would do, and she dropped it into the bucket, intending to stir up a lather with the poker as soon as it had melted sufficiently.

While she waited for this she had leisure to notice that two grey hens and a white one were crawking dismally in a row on the top of the half-door. She had closed it to exclude them, being much scandalised at their free-and-easy entrances. Poultry were never permitted to set scratching foot near the trim flower-beds about the castle gate-lodge, so Biddy had no experience of fowls and their habits; but she felt pretty sure that three hens would not keep on making such a disconsolate noise, like the winding up of the old wheezy eight-day clock at home, unless they wanted something very badly, and she quickly guessed that something to be their breakfast. Granny had most likely forgotten to feed them in the hurry of setting off to market.

What their usual food was Biddy could not tell, but during her late researches she had espied on a shelf under the dresser a large loaf of baker’s bread, which seemed to her suitable fare. Being stale, and not well kneaded, the loaf fell in two as she lifted it out, making it all the easier to break and crumble up. As she flung the white flakes thickly into the middle of the road before the door, fowls gathered speedily about them into a flock so numerous that Biddy thought: “New granny must own a power of hins.” And well she might think so, for she was entertaining unawares any of the neighbours’ “chuckens” that could arrive fast enough, half flying, half running headlong, to share in this public feast.

Watching and supplying their quarrelsome repast, and wishing the big loaf yet bigger, for it was vanishing like snow in a rapid thaw, Biddy did not see that three small children, with ragged lesson-books, and a grey stuff bag, had come along the road and stopped to look on. They were her cousins, Paddy M‘Gowran’s children, on their way to school, but Biddy, the stranger, knew of no such people. After a while: “Is it throwin’ all her good bread to the hins you are?” inquired the taller of the little girls, who was some sizes shorter than Biddy. The sudden question startled her, but as she considered it an impertinence she did not answer. Presently: “Gimme the heel of the loaf,” said the fat little boy. “It’s a nice crusty bit,” and he held out a hand.

“Indeed and I will not,” Biddy said, twisting the tough crust. “I’ve got little enough for the poor hins as it is.” Thereupon he tried to snatch it with a jump, but she flung it into the very centre of the bobbing heads, and withdrew empty-handed behind the half-door.

“Come on out of that wid yourselves, Lizzie and Willie,” said the elder little girl. “We’ll be late, and she’s a cross one.” So they trotted away down the road.

There was now nothing to hinder Biddy from beginning her great task immediately, and she set to work with much zeal on a patch near the door, where she fancied that the floor looked grimiest. At first she thought she was making good progress, because as she scrubbed away the blue cloth quickly grew so very black and dirty that it seemed as if she must soon come upon something underlying smooth and clean, white boards or gay-coloured tiling. But this did not happen. The more she scrubbed and wrung out her wet cloth the worse matters looked, and in one place a perceptible hollow unaccountably appeared. If such an extraordinary thing had been possible she would really have believed that the floor itself was turning into mud. She was feeling much perplexed and distressed, and had already splashed herself all over, when a sudden blot of shadow made her glance up, to see the doorway darkened. It was done by two girls, elder sisters of her last visitors, and they stood staring curiously in at her. Neither of them spoke to her, but they whispered to each other loudly with giggles.

“Herself’s off marketin’, I suppose. Look-a, Nan, there’s the young one she said she was fetchin’ home!”

“Glory be to goodness, what’s she doin’ at all? After spillin’ the bucket of drinkin’ water belike, and wipin’ it up.”

“A quare bad offer she’s makin’ at it then. And I declare now it’s one of granny’s good blue aperns she’s got wisped up there ruinated.”

These remarks so exasperated Biddy that she plucked up courage to say, copying Meg Hoey’s manner as closely as she could: “If _I_ was anybody else, that came gapin’ at a person doin’ a bit of work, I’d stand out of the light and mind me own business, and not be delayin’ other people.”

Her rebuke seemed to amuse the girls vastly, which was disagreeable. However, they went away directly, which was a relief. “Come along, Sally,” Nan said, “we had a right to be there by now. Och but it’s the comical, ould-fashioned thing.”

As the sound of their laughter receded Biddy determined to prevent the recurrence of all such annoying intrusions by shutting the front door, and in her haste to do so she overset the bucket, which sent wedges of water shooting out on every side. Then, while she struggled desperately with the stiff latch, a young man came sauntering by, and stopped to give it the necessary shove and shake, partly from good-nature, partly for occupation. He wore labourer’s clothes, but so far had done nothing that day except whistle on the bank a bit down the road.

“Is Mrs M‘Gowran widin?” said this Matt Caffrey. “Ah no, to be sure, it’s at market she is this mornin’. And so yourself’s keepin’ house, are you--and after spillin’ the sup of water on the floor? Well now, that’s too bad.”

“Washin’ up I was,” Biddy said, still with some pride.

“Bedad were you?” said Matt. “It’s the first ever I heard tell of washin’ up a mud floor. Maybe if you have e’er a drop of water left in it you might take a turn at the road out here. There’s scarce a puddle on it to-day at all, and you’ve got a grand one in there begorrah.” Biddy’s eyes widened with consternation as she began to perceive how much worse than useless her efforts had been. “But sure there’s no great harm done,” Matt added, seeing her dismayed look, “I’ll show you the way it can be set to rights soon enough, if that’s all that ails you.”

He stepped indoors, and picking up a large iron turf-shovel, thrust it into the hottest corner of the fire, whence he presently drew it out, turned a glowing red. This he held steadily, much as a careful laundress tests her heated flat-irons, low over the wet patch on the floor, which at once began to yield up its superfluous moisture in pallid mists of steam. He repeated the process several times, till Biddy, standing by, saw things underfoot grow reassuringly firm and dry.

“There--a fly wouldn’t aisy wet the tips of his ould toes on it now. And you might be layin’ out the table ready for dinner, agin the others come home,” said Matt, who rightly surmised that she was wishing to wield the heavy, scorching shovel, “and then they’ll find everythin’ rael iligant.”

“True for you, I might so,” said Biddy, and darted over to the dresser. But in a minute she emerged from among its deep bottom shelves with a mortified air. “I made sure I seen another loaf sittin’ in there,” she said, “and it’s only an ould white bowl.”

“Was it there you got the one you were throwin’ to the chuckens a while ago?” said Matt, “for you may depind she had it keepin’ for the breakfast to-morra. They do mostly be havin’ a bit of baker’s bread of a Sunday mornin’.”

At this suggestion Biddy looked more alarmed than she knew. “Well, she can be gettin’ another one before that, I should suppose,” she said in an unconcerned tone.

“What sort of trees do loaves of good bread be growin’ wild on in your part of the counthry, might I ax?” said Matt, with polite gravity.

But Biddy suddenly slid down into depths of despair. “Och, what’ll I do at all? Sure how could I tell it was the only one she had? And the hins was starvin’ wid the hunger, and fluttherin’ in at the door like aigles. And it’s tormintin’ me you are, talkin’ about your ould trees.”

“Whisht-a-whisht, there’s a jewel,” Matt said soothingly, “sure I wouldn’t be tormintin’ anybody. You made a fine offer at it, considerin’. And as for the loaf, we must conthrive one way or another.” He was jingling a few pennies in his pocket as he spoke, and balancing the price of whisky against the price of bread. “Just be washin’ the face and hands of you, that are a thrifle black or so,” he said, “and I’ll be back again wid somethin’ in a couple or two of minyits.”

Matt had not far to go, and he trotted briskly, especially past Doyle’s public, so that he very soon did return with nothing less than a portly loaf. But he found the kitchen empty, and through the open back door sounded doleful cries. “Murther alive! What’s took her now?” he said, setting down the loaf and running out.

Biddy had taken Matt’s advice, being indeed extremely muddy, and had gone with a jug to the small stream, which she saw flickering by, not many yards from the back door. There, stooping over the water, she lost her footing on the slippery grass, and went headforemost in. It was quite shallow, and she might easily have scrambled up the bank if she had not got into such a panic that she could only hold on to the edge and scream.

Matt pulled her out dripping. “Well now,” said he, “it’s the unlucky day wid you entirely, as Tim Joyce said when his best cow choked herself swallyin’ one of his new brogues. But the jug’s only cracked, and that’s somethin’ anyway. We’ll make a good job of it yit. And I’ll just bring you in to me sisther over yonder, and see can she get you dried.” So he conducted her along the stream, past two or three cabin-doors, till he came to one where a good-humoured young woman was standing at a tub.

“Here’s a little girl, Bessie, from ould Mrs M‘Gowran’s,” he said to her, “after dhrowndin’ herself fetchin’ water, and the rest of them all away; so I thought you might maybe set her to rights.” And Mrs Bessie said, “Mercy on us all and more too! The little crathur’s dreeped. Why, to be sure, I can borry her a loan of Katty’s Sunday frock till I give them muddy things a rinse in the tub here along wid me wash, and they’ll be none the worser.”

Meanwhile Biddy’s grandmother, and her husband, who was helping her with some parcels, were on their way home through the village. As they passed the schoolhouse, about which the children were playing, little Ellen, Lizzie and Willie M‘Gowran rushed up to them eagerly with news. “Och, granny, do you know what the cross girl at your place is after doin’ on you? She’s broke up your big loaf, and threw it every bit out to the hins.”

“The bould little thing!” Mrs M‘Gowran said in high vexation, “and I keepin’ it these two days a purpose agin to-morra.” She flounced on, so much perturbed that she forgot to produce the sugarsticks she had in her basket for the tale-bearers, who were thus justly punished.

A little further on she met their sisters Nan and Sally, and was greeted with: “There’s fine disthruction up at your place, granny. Poor Uncle Larry’s daughter has the floor all swimmin’ in says of water, and she’s after tearin’ your good blue apern in two halves to wipe it up wid. And the show she is herself wid mud and dirt is a sight to behould. And the childer says your loaf of bread--”

“I’m to be pitied wid the likes of her, the dear knows,” said their grandmother, hurrying on faster still, with Nan and Sally following to see what would happen. But when they arrived, there stood the table in the middle of a dry floor, and on it glimmered a large white loaf, which a black hen was eyeing warily, as if about to aim a judicious peck.

“What romancin’ at all had yous then?” Mrs M‘Gowran said, turning her wrath upon the two girls. “There’s naught amiss wid the floor, and she needn’t ha’ meddled wid the loaf to be lavin’ it out, but it’s right enough. Shoo, get along, you ould baste; it’s one of Mary Gallaher’s pullets. I wonder where the child is herself.”

Here Matt Caffrey put his head in at the back-door. “Matt, avic,” said Mrs M‘Gowran, “might you happen to see little Biddy runnin’ about anywhere?”

“I seen her,” Matt said rather solemnly, “times and again. And the last time I seen her it’s as near as anythin’ she was dhrowndin’ herself dead, the crathur, outside there, strivin’ to fetch you in a jug of clane water you might be wantin’ when you come home. Och no, ma’am, she isn’t hurted, glory be to goodness; I had her hefted out in a brace of shakes. Me sisther’s just givin’ her a dry at her fire, and she’ll bring her round to you directly. ’Twould be a pity of anythin’ happenin’ her, for there isn’t a finer-lookin’ child in the parish. It’s yourself she favours, ma’am.”

Sure enough Matt’s sister immediately arrived, leading Biddy, very trim and tidy in a clean pink cotton frock. But at this moment Nan, who had been poking the loaf, triumphantly announced a discovery: “It isn’t your one at all, granny. Scaldin’ hot it is, just out of the oven like, instead of bein’ stale.”

“Blathers, Nan M‘Gowran, hers it is,” Matt said, and paused, divided between a wish to screen Biddy and to let his own generosity appear.

Biddy, however, settled the question herself. “There wasn’t e’er a bit of anythin’ else to be givin’ the hins,” she said, “and the feathers of all of them standin’ on end wid the hunger. So I gave them the whole of the loaf; but the strange man said he’d bring another--before he saved me out of the river it was.”

“Well, well,” said Mrs M‘Gowran, mollified by relief from several alarms, “she done the best she could, and she isn’t of a size to have over-much sinse yet awhile.”

“And the hins wouldn’t find fau’t wid her housekeepin’ anyway,” said her husband. “Deed now, she was a grand housekeeper--for the hins.”

And thus Biddy M‘Gowran came by her nickname, which she took with her--so fast it stuck--years afterwards, when she went to keep a house of her own at Clochranbeg.

TWO PAIR OF TRUANTS

Ever since little Minnie Lawlor, accompanied by her mother and younger sister, had come to live with her grandmother in a gate-lodge of Shanlough Castle, her great wish had been to visit the castle itself, which was always whetting her curiosity by showing just the rim of one turret, like the edge of a crinkled cloud, over the rounded tree-tops in the distance. But it was not until some months had passed that she found an opportunity. Then, on a showery May morning, her mother set off early to Killavin Fair; her grandmother was pinned to the big chair in the chimney-corner by an access of rheumatics; Lizzie Hackett, the cross girl who scrubbed for them, sent word that she could not come till noon; and, as the last link in this chain of lucky chances, the rope-reins of Willie Downing’s ass-cart snapped right in front of the lodge gate just when Minnie and Baby were setting off for school. “Bad manners to you, Juggy, for a contrary ould baste!” Willie was saying as he halted for repairs. “Would nothin’ else suit you but to set me chuckin’ th’ ould reins till they broke on us in a place where a man hasn’t so much as a bit of string?” Willie, being twelve years old, seemed of formidable age and size to Minnie, who was seven: but the good-natured expression of his face, where large freckles made a well-covered pattern, emboldened her to propose the plan which had occurred to her at the sight of the empty ass-cart. As a preliminary, however, she supplied him with the longest bit of twine she could twitch from the thrifty wisp hung on the hook of a dresser. After which, “Is it anywheres near the castle you’ll be drivin’ to?” she inquired, pointing in that direction.

“I’m apt to be passin’ it pretty middlin’ near,” said Willie, struggling to knot a pair of rather skimpy ends.

“And do you think you could be takin’ me and Baby along wid you that far?” said Minnie.

“What for at all?” he said, looking doubtful.

“To see the grandeur that’s in it,” replied Minnie.

“Up at th’ ould place?” said Willie. “I never heard tell there was any such a thing in it.”

“Well, there’s grand people in it, at all events,” said Minnie. “Me grandmother does be sayin’ the Fitzallens hasn’t their equals next or nigh them. Lords of the land they are, and the top of everythin’. I’d like finely to be seein’ them, and so would Baby. But if we’ve any talk of walkin’ a step up the avenue, me grandmother always says: ‘On no account suffer them, Maria; it mightn’t be liked by the Family.’ So we do be stoppin’ in the little ugly shrubbery.”

“I dunno is there e’er a lord in it,” said Willie, doubtfully. “If there is, I never laid eyes on him.” This was disappointing.

“I suppose you’re very ignorant,” Minnie remarked after a slight pause, as if she had sought and found a satisfactory explanation.

“Pretty middlin’ I am, sure enough,” Willie said more decidedly, and then added, as if he, too, had hit upon a probable conjecture: “Belike yous would be wantin’ to see Mrs O’Rourke, th’ ould housekeeper?” Minnie might have replied truly that she had never heard tell of any such person; but as the idea seemed to remove her new acquaintance’s difficulties she answered: “Ay, sure we could go see her if you took us along. I can step in meself over the wheel, and you can aisy give Baby a heft up.” “But in my belief it’s goin’ to school the two of yous had a right to be,” Willie said, relapsing into doubt again as he glanced at their small bundle of ragged-edged books.

“Och, me mother’d say we might have a holiday this minyit, only she’s went to the fair,” Minnie affirmed confidently, though she might have had some difficulty in reconciling this belief with her gladness that there was not present anybody whose permission need be asked. “I’ll get in first.”

“Themselves inside there might be infuriated wid the whole of us,” said Willie, still unconvinced.

“Sure you’re not a tinker, are you?” Minnie said, ostentatiously surveying the no-contents of the cart. “They do be biddin’ us have nothin’ to say to tinkers, but ne’er a tin can or anythin’ I see in it.” As Willie’s objections seemed to be over-ruled by this argument, she continued: “So Baby and I’ll run in and leave our books, and get our good hats; we’ll be back agin you have the reins mended--mind you wait for us.”

Her anxiety about her appearance before the eyes of the grand people made her risk losing the chance of seeing them at all as she hurried herself and her sister into their best jackets and new hats trimmed with pink gauze and daisies; while a wild hope she secretly entertained that they would be offered hospitality up at the castle led her to discard the basket containing their dinners. Baby, indeed, was inclined to demur at this, so Minnie compromised the matter by extracting the two oranges which crowned the menu, and Baby, bearing the golden balls, followed as contented as any ordinary queen.

The ass-cart had obligingly waited for them, and Willie Downing had spread a sack for them to sit on at the back. He also helped Baby to scramble up, but unfortunately said to Minnie, “You’d better be keepin’ a hold on her, for ones of that size don’t have much wit. She’d drop off as aisy as a sod of peat, and be delayin’ me to pick her up”--a remark which Baby resented, as albeit three years short of Minnie’s age, and thrice as young as Willie, she had a strong sense of her own dignity. Otherwise the drive was very thoroughly enjoyable. The cart was not, indeed, a luxurious vehicle, being simply a flat wooden tray on wheels, with no springs to soften its jolts, and no rail to prevent one of them from jerking out an unwary passenger. But the little girls thought it a most desirable substitute for their stuffily stupid schoolroom, and when they were rocked as if in a boat on a choppy sea, Minnie said that it was as good as going two ways at once. Juggy’s pace was slow, as suited her venerable appearance, for many years had made her as white as if she had been bleached and as stiff as if she had been starched. Willie had a thick ash stick, with which he every now and then made a loud rattling clatter on the front board of the cart. “You might as well,” he explained, “be batin’ ould carpets as Juggy, but the noise keeps her awake sometimes.” Minnie and Baby, however, had so much to look at in the strange bog-land through which the cart was passing that they were in no hurry for the end of their drive. In fact, even Minnie felt a little forlorn when Willie drew up at a small gate in a high stone wall and said: “I’ll be droppin’ yous here. It’s the nearest I can be bringin’ yous to the castle. You’ll find your ways to it pretty middlin’ aisy by them shrubbery paths, unless you take the wrong turn; you might ready enough, for there’s a dale of diff’rint walks through it, but they’ll bring you somewheres anyhow. Git along out of that, Juggy.” For then it suddenly occurred to her that they had come a long way, which they must travel back all by themselves. Willie’s directions, too, were not by any means as clear as she could have wished, but no more were to be had, as Juggy started perversely without her usual delay; and although he shouted something as he jogged away, they could make out only the words “pretty middlin’,” and it was useless to call “what?” Soon the sounds of the creaking wheels and clattering stick died out of hearing; so Minnie took Baby in tow and ran into the shady shubberies, hoping rather uneasily for the best.

Now, on this same May morning, and in the same neighbourhood, two other young persons were planning an adventurous expedition. Mick and Rosanna Tierney, who lived in the village of Glasdrum, not far from Shanlough Castle, were bigger children than Minnie and Baby Lawlor, and attended the white-washed school near the Lawlor’s gate-lodge, but less regularly than they would have liked to do. For when they were kept at home it was by no means to amuse themselves, and they much preferred their holidays at school. On this morning, however, although they grumbled over their tasks, it was not because they were prevented from pursuing their studies, but because they particularly wanted to go and spend their pennies at Killavin Fair. Mick had five and Rosanna had four, partly in halfpence, so that when their wealth was all spread out on the top of the low yard wall, the row of coins looked long enough to buy almost anything. And at Killavin Fair wonderful purchases might be made. The young Tierneys had heard that you could get four sugar-sticks, “the len’th of your arm,” for one penny, and there were swinging boats, and a theatre, and other shows to which the same sum would procure admission. Accordingly, they had set their hearts firmly upon it. But unluckily Mrs Tierney had been told that “great bargains entirely” would appear there in the shape of “rael grand blankets, that heavy you could scarce believe the weight of them, wid a quare raisonable price on them whatever,” and having scraped together a few shillings she was very anxious to inspect these wares. To Mick and Rosanna, in this warm May weather, heavy blankets seemed highly uninteresting, but their mother saw further and considered her business of more importance than sugar-sticks or merry-go-rounds. Thus it happened that Rosanna and Mick were required to stay at home minding Biddy and Peter. The charge seemed to saddle them with quite disabling incumbrances; for Peter was subject to panics at anything new and strange in his eighteen months’ experience of life, and would certainly roar without ceasing if brought in among the marvels of the fair, while three-year-old Biddy, though quiet and tractable, was too little to walk, and too heavy to be carried, a couple of Irish miles. “Sure, you might as well be liftin’ a sack of pitaties,” said Rosanna; and Mick added: “Ay, bedad, and you could aisy be shyin’ a one of them down the road as far as she’d go without whingein’ to rest.” Yet though matters looked so hopeless the day was still young when a promising scheme presented itself to them. Mick had just captured Peter, who was in the act of toddling off up the street on some excursion of his own, and who loudly resented his arrest.

“Och, now, whisht bawlin’,” Mick said to Peter. “Was it losin’ yourself you wanted to be? Bobby Byrne was tellin’ me,” he remarked to Rosanna, “that they got a stray kid out on the bog one day last week. Belongin’ to the tinkers they thought it was.”

“And what did they do wid it?” Rosanna inquired.

“Brought it to the Shanlough Barracks down below there till the polis would be findin’ out who owned it.”

“I wish to goodness we could be lavin’ _these_ two there,” said Rosanna.

“I wish we could so,” said Mick.

“We could carry them that far ready enough--it’s only a shortish step,” Rosanna went on slowly, as if she were considering something really possible; “and then, if we’d left them down there, we might skyte over the bog to Killavin, that’s the nearest way, and see the fair, and pick them up again when we would be comin’ back, as handy as anythin’. The polis ’ud mind them first-rate; it’s their business to look after whatever’s gone lost.”

“But sorra a bit of these ones _is_ lost,” objected Mick.

“And sure, couldn’t we very aisy lose them,” said Rosanna, “somewheres convanient to the barracks?”

“The ould lads,” Mick said, meaning the police, “would know right well whose childer they are, and where they come from.”

“And what great harm if they did, you gaby?” said Rosanna. “And besides, aren’t they a new set that’s only a few weeks in it? Very belike they never laid eyes on either of them.”

“Gaby yourself,” Mick said, “but Biddy’d be apt to tell them anyhow. She’s gettin’ to spake terrible plain.”

“Biddy niver say’s e’er a word except ‘_Yis_’ when she’s wid strange people; she’s a good child,” Rosanna said with confidence. “But I was thinkin’ if we might by chance run up agin mother in the fair, and then where’d we be?”

“Och, for the matter of that we could dodge her aisy enough in the crowds there’ll be in it,” said Mick.

“Let’s thry, at all events,” said Rosanna, suddenly, pursing up her mouth, and eyeing him with the expression of a magpie who is not sure how near he may venture to hop. And Mick said, “We will, bedad.”