CHAPTER III
THE OLD WOMAN IN RED
“How many miles to Dublin town?
Threescore and ten.
Can I get there by candle-light?
Yes, and back again!”
With the last words the two little girls clasped hands and ran round and round the great stone slab, not hearing their father’s voice calling to them from his bench.
As the children dropped upon the stone he called more sharply, “Kathleen! Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, but I do not fear you,” answered Kathleen, leading Mary Ellen to her father’s side. She put her arm around his neck and kissed his patient face, then seated herself on his knee.
“I used to fear you,” she said with a laugh, “after Granny Connor told me you had made a bargain with the leprecaun, and that you had a secret hiding-place.”
“And now it’s no secret at all, at all,” her father said. “The grandmother has learned it, too, and will be calling you down to run errands the minute she lays eyes on you here.”
“We were both helping her, the morn,” said Mary Ellen.
“What were you doing, jewel?” asked the father of the little blind child.
“Oh, reddin’ up the house,” replied Mary Ellen. “Kathleen swept the floor, and I wiped the dishes, and then I held the yarn for Grandma Connell. She is knitting you some stockings.”
“Yes,” added Kathleen, “and I drove the little dun cow to the pasture beyond the bog; and on my way home I pulled some rushes to make a new brush for the hearth.”
“I helped Grandma Barry with the churning, too,” said Mary Ellen. “We churned and churned, but not a bit of butter did we get till Kathleen came home and put a sod of burning peat under the churn. Then the butter came soon enough, and Kathleen said the good people had put a spell upon the cream.”
“Faith, you’re always thinking of the fairies,” exclaimed her father. “Do you like old Granny Connor’s witch tales better than the stories I tell you of brave Irish men, like Brian Boru and Conn of the Hundred Battles?”
Kathleen looked at him quickly. “You tell us that Conn lived many hundred years ago, and Brian Boru has been dead these eight hundred years; but Granny Connor says that the fairies are living now. They have a council hall in a cave between here and Letterkenny. The cave is under the great Rock of Doon, and—”
“I like not to hear you speak so much of old Granny Connor and her tales,” her father interrupted her. “It’s her and her red cloak have put sorrow and shame on me these many years.
“Do you mind how green the grass is already, down there in front of the door, Kathleen, child?” he added.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m fond of the feeling of it to my bare feet.”
“You might travel over the whole of Donegal without seeing another yard so green,” he said sadly, “and it’s a shame to me to have it so.”
“Why?” asked Mary Ellen, who thought the soft grass the best playground in the whole world.
“Because no stranger ever stops before our door to beg a bite or a night’s shelter from us,” he replied.
“True it is,” said the child, “but Grandma Barry says it is lonely here and no one cares to come.”
“I mind it is because Granny Connor put the curse upon me years ago, when first I came here,” her father repeated. “She said, ‘May the grass be always green before your door,’ and green it has been ever since.”
“But why should that be a curse?” asked Kathleen.
“Because Ireland is the kindest country under the sun,” he answered. “Open house and open heart is our motto, and if a yard is green, ’tis because no friendly foot has worn it bare.”
Kathleen’s cheeks flushed. “Danny and I will dig up every blade of grass before we sleep the night,” she declared.
“Whist,” said her father. “It is as it is. But it might have been different if I had said the kind word to the old woman in red when I brought your mother to these parts years gone.”
“What did she do?” asked Mary Ellen, taking her father’s big hand in her two little ones and holding it fast.
“We were just after lighting the first sod of peat on the hearth, when Granny Connor stood at the door, dressed all in her red cloak, and so still that no one had heard her step. ‘’Tis a haunted country that you’ve come to,’ she said, and it frightened your mother to hear her.
“There were the three of you children, and Mary Ellen but a wee baby. Your mother was ailing, and I was angered at the old woman’s tongue. ‘Be off with your crazy talk!’ I said, seeing that your mother was scared, and Granny went away across the bog, but first she said the curse.”
“I wouldn’t have bided here after that,” said Kathleen, but her father shook his head.
“I had worked a long time to build the little cottage and get it dry-thatched,” he said, “and I had a fine flock of sheep to pasture on the hillside. But the mother was lonely and fearsome after Granny Connor’s visit, and she pined away and died.”
The children nestled closer to his side to comfort him, and he put a hand on each little head,—Kathleen’s dark and straight-haired, Mary Ellen’s yellow and curly.
“Then I sent into County Sligo for your two grandmothers to come and bide,” he went on, “and soon I had to do something else to earn a living, because the sheep fell sick and died in the pasture.”
“What did you do?” questioned Mary Ellen.
“I went over the mountains a-tinkering,” replied her father. “But your mother used to say that bad luck follows those that have no steady biding-place, and so it was for me. Wherever I went there was a whisper that I was like to have trouble for company, and faith, in those days he seemed my best friend.”
“Grandma Barry says to look trouble in the eye and he’ll turn away,” said Kathleen.
“Sure I’ve seen no more of him since Danny got big enough to lend a hand,” said her father. “Danny’s the good lad and will do a hand’s turn of work with the best of them.”
“’Tis Danny that keeps the house dry-thatched,” said Kathleen, looking down at the brown-thatched, white-walled cottage at the foot of the hill.
“’Tis Kathleen that reds up the house and helps the two grandmothers,” suggested Mary Ellen.
“She’s a fine slip of a girl,” replied her father heartily, “and you too, Molly jewel; there’s a pair of ye.”