It was questionable whether the wife’s affectionate reminiscence was a compliment or not; and an expression of sad humor, between a smile and a scowl, passed over O’Brien’s face, as he regarded his elder son, the heir to his personal beauties and accomplishments—and to his cast off clothes. It was of little use the latter were, for the father usually exacted so much of them, that when they descended to the son, sad make shifts were necessary to keep up in them any show of integrity, however superficial. And the stitches which were hurriedly taken between whiles, by his mother, had a comprehensive character which brought distant parts of the garments into a proximity very far from their original intention. The difference in size between father and son permitted a latitude in this respect, and the gathering together of the fabric produced an appearance more picturesque than elegant. As to the extra length of the garments that soon corrected itself, and Paddy junior’s ankles presented a ring of ragged fringe; or a couple of well-developed calves protruded in easy indifference. Indeed he was a broth of a boy, good natured and “bidable,” as he was ragged and careless. It was time that his good properties should be made available—and that some of the other young ones should have a chance at their father’s wardrobe. CHAPTER II. It was a sad thing to part with Paddy. But necessity knows no law, and he was apprenticed to a farmer with more land and fewer children than Patrick O’Brien. And it was no less sore to Paddy to leave the homestead, than for his brothers and sisters and father and mother to give up the “moral of his father.” Those whose hearts are not united by a community in privation, and whose easy lives present no exigencies in which they are compelled to feel with and for each other, can separate without tears, and be re-united without emotion. But the few miles of distance which were now to be placed between little Paddy and the cot where he was born, seemed to him almost an unbounded desert; and the going away from home, though for so small a journey, was equivalent to banishment. He took a sorrowful review of all the familiar objects which had been his companions from his birth. There was not a scratch on the cabin walls that did not seem to him as a brother; not a mud-hole around the premises that was not as an old familiar friend. But he manfully tore himself from all; and it was with no little sensation of independence that he felt that henceforth he was really to earn his own living, and to eat bread which should not diminish the breakfasts of the rest. There were other circumstances too, as yet undeveloped, which aided him in becoming reconciled. The inmates of the new home were not strange to little Paddy, and one of them, in especial, he had a childish weakness and fondness for. It is not our intention to say that Paddy and little Norah knew any thing about what boarding-school misses call