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.
"Whin you're dailin' with b'ys take 'em in toime," was the widow's motto. "What's the use of lettin' 'em climb up and fall down, and maybe break their legs or arms, and then take their promise? Sure, and I'll take it before the harm's done, so I will."
Such tooting the delighted little fellows had never heard. "Barney!" whispered Tommie, in the middle of the night, with a nudge. "Barney! there's another of 'em!"
"And listen to the bell on it," returned Barney. "Ain't you glad we moved?"
And then they fell asleep to wake and repeat the conversation a little later. Larry was the only one who slept the night through. The rest were waked so many times by the unaccustomed noise that one night seemed like twenty.
"We'll be used to it in toime," said the heavy-eyed little widow to yawning Pat and Mike the next morning. "And the more things you get used to in this world the better for you. I belave it's quite something loike to be able to sleep with engines tootin' and blowin' off steam, and bells a-ringin', and cars a-bumpin'. Even a baby can slape where 'tis quiet, you know."
Breakfast had been over an hour.
"Now, Pat," said his mother, "that's not the way to make beds. Off with them covers and make 'em over again."
Mrs. O'Callaghan was standing in the doorway and looking in at the roomful of beds. "I don't mane it for unkindness, Pat, but sure and the way you've got 'em made up they look jist loike pigs' nests with covers over 'em. There, that's better," she commented when Pat had obediently made all the beds over again under her instructions. "You can't larn all there is to bed-makin' in a day. 'Tis practice makes parfect, as your copy book used to say. But I'm thinkin' you'll have it in a week, for you're your father's son, and he was a quick wan to larn, was Tim. And now I'll be teachin' you a bit of cookin' while I have the chance. You must larn that as quick as you can, Pat, for a poor cook wastes a sight, besides settin' dishes of stuff on the table that none but pigs can eat. And in most places the pigs would get their messes, but here we've got no pigs, and whativer you cook we've got to be eatin'. Andy was askin' for beans for to-morrow a bit ago. What's your ideas about bakin' beans, Pat? How would you do it?"
Pat thought a moment. "I'd wash 'em good, and put 'em in a pan, and bake 'em," he said.
"Sure, then, you've left out one thing. With that receipt, Pat, you'd need a hammer to crack 'em with after they was baked. No, no, Pat, you pick 'em over good and put 'em a-soak over night. In the mornin' you pick 'em over again, and wash 'em good and bile 'em awhile, and pour off the water, and bile 'em again in fresh water with jist enough salt in it, and then you put 'em in the oven and bake 'em along with a piece of pork that's been a-bilin' in another kittle all the toime."
Pat looked a trifle astonished, but all he said was, "Baked beans is a queer name for 'em, ain't it?"
Mrs. O'Callaghan smiled. "That's the short of it, Pat, jist the short of it. The names of things don't tell half there is to 'em sometoimes. And now for the dinner. It's belavin' I am you can cook it with me standin' by to help you out when you get into trouble."
Pat tied on a clean apron, washed his hands and set to work.
"That's it! That's it!" encouraged Mrs. O'Callaghan, from time to time, as the cooking progressed. "And I'll jist be tellin' you, Pat, you're not so green as some girls I've seen. I'd rather have a handy b'y as an unhandy girl any day."
A little later she stood in the shanty door. "Come, Moike!" she called. "Bring the little b'ys in to dinner. Pat's a-dishin' it a'ready."
Mike had been detailed by his prudent mother as a guard to prevent his small brothers from making too intimate acquaintance with freight cars and engines. He was by this time pretty hungry, and he marshaled in his squad with scant ceremony.
A week went by and the widow was settled. Each boy was placed in his proper class at the public school, and the mother had her coveted four washing places.
"I didn't come to town to be foolin' my toime away, so I didn't," said Mrs. O'Callaghan, as she sat down to rest with a satisfied face. "Pat," she continued, "you've done foine with the work this week. All I've to say is, 'Kape on.' It'll kape you busy at it with school on your hands, but, sure, them as is busy ain't in mischief, nayther."
The next week all went well with the widow and Larry as usual, but the boys at school found rough sailing.
"Ah, but Mrs. Thompson's the jewel!" cried Mrs. O'Callaghan on Monday evening. "She do be sayin' that Larry's a cute little fellow, and she has him in to play where she is, and he gets to hear the canary bird sing, so he does. Didn't I be tellin' you, Pat, that I knew there was them in this town would help me that way? But what makes you all look so glum? Didn't you foind the school foine the day? Niver moind! You ain't acquainted yet. And jist remember that iverybody has a deal to bear in this world, and the poor most of all. If anybody does you a rale wrong, come tell me of it. But if it's only nignaggin', say naught about it. 'Twon't last foriver, anyway, and them that's mane enough to nignag a poor b'y is too mane to desarve attintion, so they are."
The widow looked searchingly at her older sons. She saw them, under the tonic of her sound counsel, straighten themselves with renewed courage, and she smiled upon them.
"I'll niver be makin' Tim's b'ys weak-spirited by lettin' 'em tittle-tattle of what can't be helped," she thought.
"Now, b'ys, heads up and do your bist!" she said the next morning as she went to her work.
But it was one thing to hold up their heads at the shanty, and quite another to hold them up on the noisy, swarming campus where they knew nobody, and where the ill-bred bullies of the school felt free to jeer and gibe at their poor clothing and their shy, awkward ways.
"Patrick O'Callaghan!" yelled Jim Barrows derisively.
It was recess and the campus was overflowing with boys and girls, but Pat was alone. "Just over from the 'ould coonthry'," he continued. "You can tell by his clothes. He got wet a-comin', and just see how they've shrunk!"
The overgrown, hulking fellow lounged closer to the tall and slender Irish boy, followed by the rough set that acknowledged him as a leader. Some measured the distance from the ends of Pat's jacket sleeves to his wrists, while others predicted the number of days that must elapse before his arms burst through the sleeves.
The spirit of the country-bred boy quailed before this coarse abuse, which he knew not how to resent. He glanced about him, but no way of escape offered. He was hemmed in. And then the bell struck. Recess was over. He thought of his brothers in different grades from himself, though in the same building. "Is there them that makes it hot for 'em when they can?" he said anxiously to himself. "We'll have to be stayin' more together mornin's and noons and recesses, so we will."
But staying together did not avail. Jim Barrows and his set found more delight in tormenting several unresisting victims than they could possibly have enjoyed with only one.
"Ah, but this nignaggin's hard to stand!" thought Pat a week later. He was on his way to school. Pat was always last to get off on account of his work. That morning Jim Barrows was feeling particularly valiant. He thought of the "O'Callaghan tribe," as he called them, and his spirits rose. He was seventeen and large for his age. "Them low Irish needs somebody to keep 'em to their places," he said to himself, "and I'm the one to do it."
Just then he spied Andy a few steps ahead of him, Andy, who was only eleven, and small and frail. Two strides of his long legs overtook the little boy. A big, ugly hand laid itself firmly on the shrinking little shoulder. Words of abuse assailed the sensitive ears, and were followed by a rude blow. Then Jim Barrows, regarding his duty done for that time, lounged on, leaving the little fellow crying pitifully.
A few moments later, Pat came along, and, finding his favorite brother crying, insisted upon knowing the reason. And Andy told him. With all the abuse they had borne, not one of the brothers had been struck before. As Pat listened his anger grew to fury. His blue eyes flashed like steel.
"Cheer up, Andy!" he said, "and run on to school. You needn't be afraid. I can't go with you; I've business on hand. But you needn't be afraid."
He had just ten minutes till school would call. Who was that, two blocks off, loitering on a corner? Was it?—it was Jim Barrows.
With a dogged step that did not seem hurried, Pat yet went rapidly forward. Straight up to the bully he walked and looked him firmly in the eye. "You struck my brother Andy because you thought you could," he said. And then, in the language of those Western boys, "he lit into him." "'Tis Andy's fist is on you now!" he cried, while he rained blows on the hulking coward, who did not offer to defend himself. "And there!" with a tremendous kick as Jim Barrows turned to run, "is a taste of his foot. Touch him again if you dare!"
Needless to say, he didn't dare. "I hear your brother Andy's been fighting," said the principal, as he stopped Pat the next day in the street. "At least, there are marks of Andy's fist and Andy's foot on Jim Barrows." His eyes twinkled as he spoke and then grew grave again. "Fighting's a bad thing in general, but you are excusable, my lad, you are excusable."
Pat looked after the principal going with a quick firm step on his busy way, and thought him the finest man in town, for, so far, nobody had given the poor Irish boy a word of sympathy and encouragement.
That evening Pat ventured to tell his mother.
"And so that's what the principal said, is it?" commented Mrs. O'Callaghan. "He's a man of sinse. Your father was a man of great sinse, Pat. Fightin' is a bad thing, so it is. But your father's gone, and it's you must kape the little wans from harm in his place. You'd be but a bad brother to stand by and see any wan strike little Andy. There's some things has got to be put a stop to, and the sooner it's done the better, says I." Then after a pause, "I hope you larn your lessons, Pat?"
"I do, mother."
"I thought you would. Your father always larnt all that come handy to him. Larnin's no load, Pat. Larn all you can."
Now Pat, with the exception of Latin, was no whit behind other boys of his age, for he had been sent to school in the country from the time he was five years old. The fight being over, he gave his mind thoroughly to his books, a thing he could not do while he did not know what to expect from Jim Barrows and his set, and his class-standing was high.
And now the first of April was at hand. The O'Callaghans had been a month in town and the widow was beginning to see that she had overestimated the purchasing power of what she could earn at four washing places. Four dollars a week needed a supplement. How could it be supplied? Mrs. O'Callaghan cast about in her mind. She had already discovered that Wennott offered a poor field for employment, so far as boys were concerned, and yet, in some way, her boys must help her. By day, by night she thought and could hit upon nothing unless she took her sons from school.
"And that I'll not do," she said, "for larnin' is at the root of everything."
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."
"Oh, Pat will make it for you, ma'am," was the answer, and again Mrs. Brady yielded.
"Now, Pat, on with your blouse."
The two women waited while Pat untied the bundle he carried and put on a clean cotton blouse.
"'Twas his father's blouse, ma'am. A bit loose now, but he'll grow to it. He's very loike his father."
Mrs. Brady looked at the tall, slender boy wearing his father's blouse and his mother's apron, with an old straw hat on his head for a dust protector, and then at the mother watching his every movement with loving eyes, and only anxious that he might give satisfaction. And all sense of incongruity vanished from her mind.
"Now, Pat, show the lady what you can do." And Pat obeyed as if he were five instead of fifteen. The dead father had trained his sons from their babyhood to yield implicit obedience to their mother. Deftly he set to work. He turned the mattress; he smoothed and tucked in each sheet and cover as he put it on; he beat up the pillows, and within ten minutes the bed was perfectly made. There was no need for Mrs. Brady to speak. She showed her surprise and delight in her face.
"I was thinkin' Pat could suit you, ma'am," smiled the mother. "And now, if you've more beds, maybe Pat had better make 'em before the dust of the swapin' is on him."
"I have no more this morning," responded Mrs. Brady courteously.
"Then, Pat, there's the broom." Then she turned to Mrs. Brady. "Now, ma'am, what's your ideas about swapin'? There's them that says, 'Swape aisy and not be gettin' the wools off the carpet.' But them wools don't many of 'em come off the carpet. There's a plinty of 'em comes on bare floors that ain't swept regular. I says, 'A vigorous swapin' and no light brushin' except by a lady loike yoursilf as hasn't got strength.'"
"Those are my ideas, too," said Mrs. Brady as with an air of satisfaction she began to spread the dust covers over her bed.
All day Pat swept and dusted and wiped paint and window panes, and at night he went home with seventy-five cents in his pocket.
The widow was getting supper, but she worked mechanically, for her heart was in her ears, and they were listening for Pat's step. The brothers, stowed here and there in chinks between the pieces of furniture, watched with eager eyes their mother's movements, and sniffed the savory odors that escaped from a perfectly clean saucepan in capable hands. But no boy lounged on the bed, nor even leaned against it, and no one sat in the father's chair. To sit there meant special honor at the hands of the family.
"And it's Pat will sit in the rocking-chair and rest himsilf this avenin'," cried Mrs. O'Callaghan, returning to her cooking from a brief trip to the door. "It's Pat'll be bringin' home money the night; honest money that he's earned."
The little boys appeared impressed, and on Mike's face came a look of determination that led his mother to say, "All in good toime, Moike. You're as willin' as Pat any day. I know that. And the way you look after the little b'ys, your father himsilf couldn't do better."
And then Pat came stepping in.
"Did she praise you, Pat?" cried the little woman as she dished up the supper. She was hungry for appreciation of her boy.
"She did that. She said, 'Patrick, you're elegant help, and will you come again next Saturday?"
"And what did you tell her?"
"I told her I would, and let that Jim Barrows keep a civil tongue in his head when he hears of it, or I'll be teaching him another lesson. He'll not be throwin' it up to me that it's girl's work I'm doin' if he knows what's best for him."
"Listen to me, Pat," said his mother, soberly. "I'll be tellin' you now my plans for you so you'll not be runnin' agin 'em. It's to be a gintleman you are, and gintlemen don't fight jist because some Jim Barrows of a fellow says tauntin' words to 'em. You had to kape him off Andy, but moindin' his impudence to yoursilf is another thing."
For the first time in his life Pat looked unconvinced of his mother's wisdom, and she went on soothingly, "But sure and I don't belave he'll be sayin' a word to you, Pat. And anyway you know how many of the blissid saints and angels was women on the earth, and how it was their work to kape things clane and pleasant for them they loved. And that ain't a work to be ashamed of by girl or b'y."
The little boys busily eating had seemed not to notice. Only Mike had looked on with interest. But into all their hearts had sunk the lesson that gentlemen did not fight.
"Are we all to be gintlemen?" asked Barney looking up when his plate was quite empty.
"Ivery wan of you. What should your father's b'ys be but gintlemen and him the best man as iver lived?"
It was not to be expected that in any place service such as Pat's would be willingly done without, least of all in Wennott. The more Mrs. Brady thought of it, the smaller and more unsatisfactory did Saturday appear, and on Friday morning she went again to the shanty.
"And I hope you're not come to say you've changed your moind about wantin' Pat to-morrow," said Mrs. O'Callaghan when civil greetings had been exchanged and Mrs. Brady sat once more in the rocker.
"In one sense I have changed my mind," answered Mrs. Brady with a smile. "I want Pat to-morrow, but I want him all the other days of the week, too."
The widow was silent. She had not planned so far as this. What would Pat say? Would he do it?
"I will give him his board and lodging and a dollar a week to help me Saturday and Sunday, and before and after school the other days of the week. Saturday he would have to work all day, of course, but Sunday he would have almost nothing to do," said Mrs. Brady. "The washing and ironing I put out," she added as Mrs. O'Callaghan still hesitated.
"You're very koind, ma'am," responded the widow after a pause. "I hope Pat'll go to you. I'll ask him."
"What makes you think he might not like to come?" inquired Mrs. Brady, anxious in her turn.
"Well, you see, ma'am, 'tis girl's work entoirely you want him to do. And Pat's been put on and made fun of almost more than he can bear since we moved to Wennott. Sure and them b'ys—I'd call 'em imps, only they're big for imps, bein' bigger and stouter than Pat himsilf—they sets on him and foretells when his arms is goin' to burst through his sleeves and such as that, loike an almanac, ma'am. And him a-loikin' nice clothes as well as any one, only he can't get 'em because it's poor we are, ma'am. Not that there's anything wrong about that. 'Tis the Lord's will that it's so, and we're doin' our best with it. But Pat's young. He didn't mean to tell me of it, but his moind bein' full of it, it slipped out.
"Pat, he done as I told him, and come to you a-Saturday, and he'd kape on comin' Saturdays, but I can't tell him he must go out to service loike a girl, when I know what thim b'ys will have in store for him. I must jist ask him, do you see? And what he'll say, I can't tell. He's mighty brave. Maybe he'll come. I've been tellin' him he's not to be lickin' that Jim Barrows if he is impudent to him."
"Does Pat fight?" asked Mrs. Brady doubtfully. "He seemed so amiable."
"And pleasant he is," cried the widow earnestly. "'Twas not for himsilf he fought, do you understand. 'Twas because Jim Barrows hurt Andy's feelin's and struck him besides. Andy's my third son, ma'am. He's only eleven, and not strong ayther. And Pat, he loves him better, I belave, than he does all the rest of the b'ys put together."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Brady with a relieved air.
"But havin' got a taste of makin' Jim Barrows kape off Andy has sort of got him in the notion of not takin' nothin' off him, do you see? But it's his father has a good influence over him yet. Tim's in his grave, ma'am, but it's meanin' I am he shall still rule his b'ys. And he does, too."
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