The Widow OCallaghans Boys | Page 8

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."

CHAPTER IV
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