Ellen grew to a fine, stout girl, with a cheerful open face when you spoke to her—but there was a shade of care and thought over it when in repose, which you may often see in the oldest daughter of a poor man. She moved and acted as if while the tribe who had exhausted the family names of the O’Briens were born children to her mother, she was born before them for a deputy mother to them all. Legs and arms were all over the cottage, in all sorts of places where they shouldn’t be, and she jerked them out of harm’s way, with a half-petulant dexterity which was pleasant to observe. Tow-heads and shock-heads popped up continually, and she pushed them aside with a “there now, wont you be aisy!” which was musical, with a _very_ little discord. And there was an easy and natural carelessness of authority and half rebellion in obedience, which was truly puzzling to strangers, but which gave no discomposure to Ellen or to her mother. Indeed, Mrs. O’Brien sat, the centre of her offspring, with the most contented air in the world, plying her knitting needles with easy assiduity, and dismissing child after child from her arms, as they severally grew out of her immediate province and into Ellen’s. Or she bustled, if there was bustling to do, with perfect indifference, it might seem, to one who did not know her, as to whether there were children in the house or not. But sometimes her interference became necessary as a measure of last appeal, and she came down on them with hearty whacks which were invariably poulticed with a word or two, half scolding and half good-natured wit. The children were thus reconciled to the propriety and necessity of certain summary inflictions, which at the same time they took care to avoid, when it could be done without _too_ much trouble. Often there were voices heard in a higher key than is considered proper in a drawing-room, and sometimes there was a debouchment of children out at the door, and a consequent squealing of little pigs, and fluttering of chickens before it; which showed the mother’s activity at ejection. But no drawing-room ever sheltered more gentle hearts, and no mother of high degree ever followed a scolding with more patience than Mrs. O’Brien did. There was no malice in her, and a half-laugh stood ever in her eye, as she looked out at the door on the living miscellanies she had put in motion, and said—“Sure you can’t turn a hand, or step any place at all, for pigs, chickens and childer!”