"I am, honey," said she. "Those children done me good. I could have got up at one o'clock, I felt so well, but Mrs. Cafferty thought I'd better not." "I did so," said Mrs. Cafferty. "Not a foot do you stir out of that bed till your daughter comes home, ma'am, said I. For do you see, child, many's the time you'd be thinking you were well and feeling as fit as a fiddle, and nothing would be doing you but to be up and gallivanting about, and then the next day you'd have a relapse, and the next day you'd be twice as bad, and the day after that they'd be measuring you for your coffin maybe. I knew a woman was taken like that--up she got; I'm as well as ever I was, said she, and she ate a feed of pig's cheek and cabbage and finished her washing, and they buried her in a week. It's the quare thing, sickness. What I say is when you're sick get into bed and stop there." "It's easy saying that," said Mrs. Makebelieve. "Sure, don't I know, you poor thing you," said Mrs. Cafferty, "but you should stay in bed as long as you are able to anyhow." "How did you get on with Mrs. O'Connor?" said Mrs. Makebelieve. "That's the mistress, isn't it?" queried Mrs. Cafferty; "an ould devil, I'll bet you." Mrs. Makebelieve rapidly and lightly sketched Mrs. O'Connor's leading peculiarities. "It's queer the people one has to work for, God knows it is," said Mrs. Cafferty. At this point a grave controversy on work might have arisen, but the children, caring little for conversation, broke into so tumultuous play that talk could not be proceeded with. Mary was enticed into a game composed in part of pussy-four-corners and tip-an-tig, with a general flavor of leap-frog working through. In five minutes her hair and her stockings were both down, and the back of her skirt had crawled three-quarters round to the front. The twins shouted and bumped on the bed, upon which and on Mrs. Makebelieve they rubbed bread and butter and sugar, while their mother roared an anecdote at Mrs. Makebelieve in tones that ruled the din as a fog horn rules the waves. XX Mary had lavished the entire of her first day's wages on delicate foods wherewith to tempt her mother's languid appetite, and when the morning dawned she arose silently, lit the fire, wet the tea and spread her purchases out on the side of the bed. There was a slice of brawn, two pork sausages, two eggs, three rashers of bacon, a bun, a pennyworth of sweets and a pig's foot. These, with bread, and butter, and tea, made a collection amid which an invalid might browse with some satisfaction. Mary then awakened her, and sat by in a dream of happiness watching her mother's eye roll slowly and unbelievingly from item to item. Mrs. Makebelieve tipped each article with her first finger and put its right name on it unerringly. Then she picked out an important looking sweet that had four colors and shone like the sun, and put it in her mouth. "I never saw anything like it, you good child you," said she.