Irish Americans -- Juvenile fiction; Mothers and sons -- Juvenile fiction; Poor -- Juvenile fiction; Widows -- Juvenile fiction
"I call that a pretty good way to put in time on Sunday," said one man
to another as they were untying their teams.
"Makes going to church seem worth while, for a fact," returned his
neighbor.
Not till the last vehicle had passed from sight did the widow look round
upon what her neighbors had left her, and then she saw sufficient pantry
stores to last even seven growing boys for a month. And among the rest
of her gifts she found coal for a week. She had not noticed her sons as
she busily took account of her stock, but when she had finished she
said, "B'ys, b'ys! 'tis your father sees the hearts of these good people
this day and rej'ices. Ah, but Tim was a ginerous man himsilf! It's
hopin' I am you'll all be loike him."
That night when the younger boys were in bed and only Pat and Mike sat
keeping her company, the widow rose from her seat, went to a box already
packed and took therefrom an account book and pencil.
"They're your father's," she said, "but it's a good use I'll be puttin'
'em to."
Writing was, for the hand otherwise capable, a laborious task; but no
help would she have from either of her sons.
"May I ask you not to be spakin'?" she said politely to the two. "It's
not used to writin' I am, and I must be thinkin' besides."
Two hours she sat there, her boys glancing curiously at her now and then
at first, and later falling into a doze in their chairs. She wrote two
words and stopped. Over and over she wrote two words and stopped. Over
and over until she had written two words and stopped fifty times. And
often she wiped away her tears. At last her task was done, and there in
the book, the letters misshapen and some of the words misspelled, were
the names of all who had come to her that morning. Just fifty there were
of them. She read them over carefully to see that she had not forgotten
any.
"Maybe I'll be havin' the chance to do 'em a good turn some day," she
said. "I will, if I can. But whether I do or not, I've got it here in
writin', that when all was gone, and I didn't have nothin', the Lord
sint fifty friends to help me out. Let me be gettin' down in the heart
and discouraged again, and I'll take this book and read the Lord's
doin's for me. Come Pat and Moike! It's to bed you must be goin', for
we're to move to-morrow, do you moind?"
CHAPTER III
According to Mrs. O'Callaghan's plans, the moving was accomplished the
next day. There was but one load of household goods, so that the two
teams of their kind neighbor made only one trip, but that load, with the
seven boys and their mother, filled the shanty by the tracks to
overflowing. The little boys immediately upon their arrival had been all
eyes for the trains, and, failing them, the freight cars. And they had
reluctantly promised never to ascend the iron freight car ladders when
they had been in their new home only one hour.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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