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“Take this,” said Nora, as if she spoke to a child; “there’s a fine crust of sugar on the top. ‘T is one I brought out for me little supper, but I ‘m so pleased wit’ bein’ rich that I ‘ve no need at all for ‘ating. An’ I ‘m as tired as I ‘m rich,” she added, with a sigh; “‘t is few can say the same in this lazy land.”

“Sure, let’s ate it together; ’tis a big little cakeen,” urged Johnny, breaking the bun and anxiously offering Nora the larger piece. “I can like the taste of anything better by halves, if I ‘ve got company. You ought to have a good supper of tay and a piece of steak and some potaties rather than this! Don’t be giving yourself nothing but the saved cakes, an’ you working so hard!”

“‘T is plenty days I ‘d a poorer supper when I was at home,” said Nora sadly; “me father dying so young, and all of us begging at me mother’s skirts. It’s all me thought how will I get rich and give me mother all the fine things that’s in the world. I wish I ‘d come over sooner, but it broke my heart whinever I ‘d think of being out of sight of her face. She looks old now, me mother does.”

Nora may have been touched by Johnny’s affectionate interest in her supper; she forgot all her shyness and drew nearer to him as they walked along, and he drew a little closer to her.

“My mother is dead these two years,” he said simply. “It makes a man be very lonesome when his mother ‘s dead. I board with my sister that’s married; I ‘m not much there at all. I do be thinking I ‘d like a house of my own. I ‘ve plinty saved for it.”

“I said in the first of coming out that I ‘d go home again when I had fifty pounds,” said Nora hastily, and taking the other side of the narrow road. “I ‘ve got a piece of it already, and I ‘ve sent back more beside. I thought I ‘d be gone two years, but some days I think I won’t be so long as that.”

“Why don’t you be afther getting your mother out? ‘T is so warm in the winter in a good house, and no dampness like there does be at home; and her brother and her sister both being here.” There was deep anxiety in Johnny’s voice.

“Oh, I don’t know indeed!” said Nora. “She’s very wake-hearted, is me mother; she ‘d die coming away from the old place and going to sea. No, I ‘m going to work meself and go home; I ‘ll have presents, too, for everybody along the road, and the children ‘ll be running and skrieghing afther me, and they ‘ll all get sweeties from me. ‘T is a very poor neighborhood where we live, but a lovely sight of the say. It ain’t often annybody comes home to it, but ‘t will be a great day then, and the poor old folks ‘ll all be calling afther me: ‘Where’s Nora?’ ‘Show me Nora!’ ‘Nora, sure, what have you got for me?’ I ‘ont forget one of them aither, God helping me!” said Nora, in a passion of tenderness and pity. “And, oh, Johnny, then afther that I ‘ll see me mother in the door!”

Johnny was so close at her side that she slipped her hand into his, and neither of them stopped to think about so sweet and natural a pleasure. “I ‘d like well to help you, me darlin’,” said Johnny.

“Sure, an’ was n’t it yourself gave me all me good fortune?” exclaimed Nora. “I ‘d be hard-hearted an’ I forgot that so soon and you a Kerry boy, and me mother often spaking of your mother’s folks before ever I thought of coming out!”