"He swallowed all the air there was at hand," admitted Brown, "and precious little milk. But he seemed hungry, and I thought he was too little to go all night without being fed." "Right ye were, an' 'tis feedin' he nades agin--only not with a shpoon. I'll take him home an' fix up a bit of a bottle for him, the poor thing. An' I'll take him at wanst, an' let ye get to bed, where ye belong, by the looks of ye." "You're an angel, Mrs. Kelcey. I hate to let you take him, with all you have on your hands--" "Shure, 'tis the hands that's full that can always hold a bit more. An' a single man can't be bothered with cast-off childher, no matter how big his heart is, as we well know." And Mrs. Kelcey departed, with the baby under her shawl and a motherly look for the man who opened the door for her and stood smiling at her in the lamplight as she went away. But when he had thrown himself, at last, on his bed, wearily longing for rest, he found he had still to wrestle a while with the persistent image of the face which was "wonderful to look at," before kindly slumber would efface it with the gray mists of oblivion. VII BROWN'S FINANCIAL RESOURCES "There, Tom, how's that? Does it droop as much as the one on the other side?" Tom Kelcey, aged fourteen, squinted critically at the long festoon of ground-pine between the centre of the chimney-breast and the angle of the dingy old oak-beamed ceiling. "Drop her a couple of inches, Misther Brown," he suggested. "No, not so much. There, that's the shtuff. Now you've got her, foine and dandy." Brown stepped down from the chair on which he had been standing, and stood off with Tom to view the effect. "Yes, that's exactly right," said he, "thanks to your good eye. The room looks pretty well, eh? Quite like having a dinner party." "It's ilegant, Misther Brown, that's what it is," said a voice in the doorway behind them. "Tom bhoy, be afther takin' the chair back to the kitchen for him." Mrs. Kelcey, mother of Tom, and next-door neighbour to Brown, advanced into the room. She was laden with a big basket, which Brown, perceiving, immediately took from her. "Set it down careful, man," said she. "The crust on thim pies is that delicate it won't bear joltin'. I had the saints' own luck with 'em this toime, praise be." "That's great," said Brown. "But I haven't worried about that. You never have anything else, I'm sure." Mrs. Kelcey shook her head in delighted protest. "The table is jist the handsomest I iver laid eyes on," she asserted, modestly changing the subject.