Mr. Price, Mrs. M’Curdy and Norah arrived the day before; a wagon followed them loaded with presents, and at ten o’clock on the day of trial the three went together to the shanty of Bonny Betty. The gate was thrown open, and after they had all walked over the grounds and had seen the neat order in which each garden was prepared for the winter, they went to Daniel M’Leary’s shanty to look at his accounts. “I’m thinking,” said good natured Larry, “that the boys will get the premium any how, and if neither Bonny Betty nor myself is to get it, why the master, God bless his honour, could not do better than let the children have it”—so he stood back, and in this happy frame of mind waited the award of his industry. Mr. Price, assisted by several gentlemen of the village, examined each man’s account as rendered in by himself every day, all fairly written out by Jemmy Brady. The result was wonderful; these poor families had not only a large mess of vegetables of the best kind for their tables every Sunday, and from twelve to fifteen bushels of potatoes for their winter use, but they had cleared—first, the boys in the corner lot—twenty-one dollars each, making sixty-three dollars. This was after paying Bonny Betty a per centage for selling the different vegetables for them, and Betty was not extortionate; this yielded the boys about four dollars a month, which with the money they earned at their different employments enabled them to buy themselves two good suits of clothes, pay their parents for their board, and put a few dollars in the savings fund. But I ought to go on with the other gardens. Next to the three boys came David Conolly—he looked so much better in health that Mr. Price did not recollect him—he produced his account; he had cleared fifty dollars. “Well done, David,” said Mr. Price, “who could have believed this?—what! fifty dollars, and such good looks! I must shake hands with you—and your wife, which is she? let me wish her joy too.” Poor Mrs. Conolly stepped forward with her handkerchief to her eyes, and shook hands with Mr. Price, but her heart was too full to speak, though Bonny Betty punched her in the side several times and whispered to her to hold up a bit.