The Widow OCallaghans Boys | Page 5

and young turned to go. There came a little lull as one after another gave the widow's hand a cordial clasp.
"My friends," said Mrs. O'Callaghan--she could be heard now--"my dear friends, I thank you all. You have made my heart strong the day."
"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.
"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