Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Garcia, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys BY GULIELMA ZOLLINGER (1904, 10th edition) [Illustration: "CAN'T I DIPIND ON YE B'YS?"] ILLUSTRATIONS Can't I depind on ye, b'ys? It's your father's ways you have For every one carried something "Cheer up, Andy!" he said Mrs. Brady looked at the tall, slender boy Pat donned his apron "I've good news for you, Fannie," said the General The General makes the gravy Pat doing the marketing Pat and Mike building the kitchen Up on the roof sat Mike with his knife Barney and Tommie a-takin' care of the geese The merchant turned to the girl clerk Mrs. O'Callaghan looked astonished Little Jim became downright sulky In they came at that moment Jim made a clatter with the dishes Open the oven door, Jim Look at that Jim work Three cheers for Jim O'Callaghan Pat and Mike were one on each side of him CHAPTER I When Mr. O'Callaghan died, after a long, severe, and expensive sickness, he left to his widow a state of unlimited poverty and seven boys. "Sure, an' sivin's the parfect number," she said through her tears as she looked round on her flock; "and Tim was the bist man as iver lived, may the saints presarve him an' rist him from his dreadful pains!" Thus did she loyally ignore the poverty. It was the last of February. Soon they must leave the tiny house of three rooms and the farm, for another renter stood ready to take possession. There would be nothing to take with them but their clothing and their scant household furniture, for the farm rent and the sickness had swallowed up the crop, the farming implements, and all the stock. Pat, who was fifteen and the oldest, looked gloomily out at one of the kitchen windows, and Mike, the next brother, a boy of thirteen, looked as gloomily as he could out of the other. Mike always followed Pat's lead. When eleven-year-old Andy was a baby Pat had taken him for a pet. Accordingly, when, two years later, Jim was born, Mike took him in charge. To-day Pat's arm was thrown protectingly over Andy's shoulders, while Jim stood in the embrace of Mike's arm at the other window. Barney and Tommie, aged seven and five respectively, whispered together in a corner, and three-year-old Larry sat on the floor at his mother's feet looking wonderingly up into her face. Five days the father had slept in his grave, and still there was the same solemn hush of sorrow in the house that fell upon it when he died. "And what do you intend to do?" sympathetically asked Mrs. Smith, a well-to-do farmer's wife and a neighbor. The widow straightened her trim little figure, wiped her eyes, and replied in a firm voice: "It's goin' to town I am, where there's work to be got, as well as good schoolin' for the b'ys."