"Faith, they made the king get up before the sun did," the peddler answered. While the children were laughing over his joke, Grandmother Barry put down her knitting and went to the cupboard for a plate of oat-cakes and her precious pound of honey. Everyone was quiet for a few minutes over the feast, and little Mary Ellen was the first to break the silence. "Father told us a story about St. Columbkille one day," she said. "He was born here in our own Donegal and he had little cakes baked for him with the letters of the alphabet on them. I'm thinkin' if I had cakes like that I could learn the letters with my fingers." "Faith, he must have had a fine time picnicking on his letters," said the peddler. "There was St. Bridget, too," said Grandmother Barry; "she was a fine woman and took great pride in learning and teaching. And I doubt not her fingers had magic in them to turn wool into yarn and yarn into stockings, like any colleen of Donegal," she added, with a look at Kathleen. But Kathleen was sound asleep in her chair and had forgotten all about the stocking she was going to finish knitting that very day. "The child is tired out with our stories," said her father. "I mind we should all be in our beds," said Grandmother Barry, and soon they were tucked away comfortably for the night. CHAPTER VII A RIDE WITH THE POSTMAN "My blessing go high, my blessing go low, My blessing go with you wherever you go." It was Mary Ellen's sweet Irish way of saying good-bye to the peddler when he went away the next day; and he replied heartily, "If I should travel over the whole of Ireland between sun-up and sun-down, I'd hear no better word." At the cross-roads he met the postman in his red jaunting-car, riding toward the thatched cottage at the foot of the hill, and he stopped to pass the time of day with him. "Give the two little girls a ride," said the peddler. "If 'tis to the National School you are going, with a letter for the teacher, this way is as short as the other, and 'tis a lonely life the two children lead,—a mile from any other house, and never another child to play with." "'Tis a letter for Jerry, himself, that I have, and 'twill take me by the cottage, anyway," answered the postman; and looked the letter over, thinking that it was probably from Grandmother Barry's daughter, Hannah Malone, as the postmark was "Kilkenny." He found the great-grandmother crooning an old Gaelic milking tune over her wheel, instead of the spinning song which she usually sang; and Grandmother Barry greeted him with, "Ah, Larry O'Day, this is just such a morning as the one when you and I went with the rest on the pilgrimage to 'Tobar N'alt,' the holy well in County Sligo, to cure us of our rheumatism."