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“‘What tark you have of Johnny O’Callahan,’ says I.

“Look at this now!” continued the proud uncle, while Aunt Biddy sat triumphantly watching the astonished audience; “‘t is a letter I got from the shild last Friday night,” and he brought up a small piece of paper from his coat-pocket. “She writes a good hand, too. ‘Dear Uncle Patsy,’ says she, ‘this leaves me well, thanks be to God. I ‘m doing the roaring trade with me cakes; all Ryan’s little boys is selling on the trains. I took one pound three the first day: ‘t was a great excursion train got stuck fast and they ‘d a hot box on a wheel keeping them an hour and two more trains stopping for them; ‘t would be a very pleasant day in the old country that anybody ‘d take a pound and three shillings. Dear Uncle Patsy, I want a whole half-barrel of that same flour and ten pounds of sugar, and I ‘ll pay it back on Sunday. I sind respects and duty to Aunty Bridget and all friends; this l’aves me in great haste. I wrote me dear mother last night and sint her me first pound, God bless her.'”

“Look at that for you now!” exclaimed Mike Duffy. “Did n’t I tell every one here she was fine an’ smart?”

“She ‘ll be soon Prisident of the Road,” announced Aunt Mary Ann, who, having been energetic herself, was pleased to recognize the same quality in others.

“She don’t be so afraid of the worruk as the worruk’s afraid of her,” said Aunt Bridget admiringly. “She ‘ll have her fling for a while and be glad to go in and get a good chance in the mill, and be kaping her plants in the weave-room windows this winter with the rest of the girls. Come, tell us all about Elleneen and the baby. I ain’t heard a word about Lawrence yet,” she added politely.

“Ellen’s doing fine, an’ it’s a pritty baby. She’s got a good husband, too, that l’aves her her own way and the keep of his money every Saturday night,” said Mary Ann; and the little company proceeded to the discussion of a new and hardly less interesting subject. But before they parted, they spoke again of Nora.

“She’s a fine, crabbed little gerrl, that little Nora,” said Mr. Michael Duffy.

“Thank God, none o’ me childre’ is red-headed on me; they’re no more to be let an’ held than a flick o’ fire,” said Aunt Mary Ann. “Who ‘d ever take the notion to be setting up business out there on the Birchy Plains?”

“Ryan’s folks ‘ll look after her, sure, the same as ourselves,” insisted Uncle Patsy hopefully, as he lighted his pipe again. It was like a summer night; the kitchen windows were all open, the month of May was nearly at an end, and there was a sober croaking of frogs in the low fields that lay beyond the village.

III.

“Where’s Nora?” Young Johnny O’Callahan was asking the question; the express had stopped for water, and he seemed to be the only passenger; this was his day off.

Mrs. Ryan was sitting on her doorstep to rest in the early evening; her husband had been promoted from switch-tender to boss of the great water-tank which was just beginning to be used, and there was talk of further improvements and promotions at Birch Plains; but the good-natured wife sensibly declared that the better off a woman was, the harder she always had to work.

She took a long look at Johnny, who was dressed even more carefully than if it were a pleasant Sunday.

“This don’t be your train, annyway,” she answered, in a meditative tone. “How come you here now all so fine, I ‘d like to know, riding in the cars like a lord; ain’t you brakeman yet on old twinty-four?”

“‘Deed I am, Mrs. Ryan; you would n’t be afther grudging a boy his day off? Where’s Nora?”