Is Friday an unlucky day? You could not get Mrs. O'Callaghan to think so, for it was upon the Friday that closed a week of anxious thinking that Mrs. Brady called at the shanty. Neither could you get Mrs. Brady to think so, for--but let us begin a little farther back. Hired girls, as they were called in Wennott, were extremely scarce. Mrs. Brady was without one--could not get one, though she had advertised long and patiently. Now she was tired to exhaustion. Sitting in the old wooden rocker that had been Mr. O'Callaghan's, Mrs. Brady rested a few moments closely surrounded on all sides by the O'Callaghan furniture. "'Tis a bit snug, ma'am," Mrs. O'Callaghan had said when piloting her to this seat, "but it's my belafe my b'ys don't moind the snugness of it so much as they would if they was girls." Mrs. Brady mechanically agreed. The four walls of the kitchen were rather too close together to inclose a bed, a wash-bench, two tubs, a cooking stove, a table, seven Windsor chairs, the water pail, the cupboard, and the rocking-chair in which Mrs. Brady sat, and leave anything but a tortuous path for locomotion. The boys knew the track, however, and seldom ran up against anything with sufficient force to disturb it or their own serenity. But there was not a speck of dust anywhere, as Mrs. Brady noticed. The widow's face was a little careworn and anxious as she sat close at hand in one of the wooden chairs listening to Mrs. Brady's explanation of her need of help. "You have been recommended to me by Mrs. Thompson. Could you come to me to-morrow, Mrs. O'Callaghan? It will be a day of sweeping and general cleaning," she concluded. The widow's countenance began to brighten. She saw her way out of the difficulty that had been puzzling her. "I can't come mesilf," she answered politely, "for what with my sivin b'ys I've my own work that can't be neglected. But my son, Pat, will do it for you. I'll come with him jist to get him started loike, for he's niver swept a carpet, though he swapes a bare floor ilegant." Well, to be sure, Mrs. Brady was not overjoyed. But she saw it was Pat or nobody, and she was very tired. So she agreed to try him. "And when will you have him come?" asked Mrs. O'Callaghan. There was no doubt expressed on the mother's face; no fear lest her son might not be able to please. "At eight," responded Mrs. Brady. "I cannot be ready for him sooner." "Then together we'll be there, you may depind." And Mrs. Brady, on the whole dissatisfied, went on her way. "If that boy--Pat, I think she called him--can do housework satisfactorily, he's the only boy that I've heard of here that can," she thought. The next morning when the two presented themselves, Mrs. Brady, after showing Mrs. O'Callaghan where to leave her wraps, led the way at once to her bedroom. "Perhaps you will just make my bed for me before you go, Mrs. O'Callaghan," she insinuated. "It has been properly aired and is ready."