CHAPTER XV

GOOD NEWS FROM COUSIN BEE

“Here are two letters for you, Kathleen mavourneen,” said her Uncle Tom, one morning about a week later, as the family were seated at the breakfast table.

“Two letters for me!” exclaimed Kathleen in surprise. “Perhaps one of them is from Father,” and she jumped out of her chair and ran around the table to get them.

“It is, it is!” she cried, looking at one of the letters. “The postmark is Portrush in County Antrim, and that’s near the Giant’s Causeway.”

“Open it, and see what it says, alanna,” suggested her Aunt Hannah, as Kathleen continued to study the envelope; and all the ten young Malones stopped eating their breakfast, and turned eager eyes upon their cousin.

Kathleen opened the letter and read the first lines. “Oh, Feena,” she said, looking up with shining eyes, “he did go to the wishing arch, and he wished for Mary Ellen’s sight, just as I asked him to.”

Then she read the rest of the letter while everyone waited. “Oh, Aunt Hannah!” she cried with delight, “Father says he is going on to the Giant’s Causeway, and I’m to come up there to meet him, and then we’ll go over to Tonroe to see Mary Ellen.”

Never did so short a letter cause so much excitement. All the Malones began talking at once and no one stopped to listen to what any one was saying. Feena jumped up to put her arms around her cousin, crying, “Kathleen, darling, you’ll never go away and leave me, will you?” Columba begged his father to let him go along with Kathleen to see that no harm came to her, and Danny repeated over and over that the child should go nowhere without himself to look after her.

When the chatter ceased for a moment, Aunt Hannah found a chance to say, “There were two letters, Kathleen. What’s become of the other?”

Sure enough, the second letter had been forgotten, and all was still for a moment while Kathleen found it and looked at the postmark.

“It is from Cousin Bee,” she said, and opened it quietly enough; but in a second she dropped it and ran to throw herself into her Aunt Hannah’s arms. “Mary Ellen can see!” she cried; “Mary Ellen can see!”

Then, indeed, there was an uproar. Columba pounded on the table with his knife and fork, shouting, “Hurrah, I told you so! It was the wishing spring that did it!” Feena danced around the room, clapping her hands and stopping at every turn to kiss Kathleen; Hannah and Anna hugged each other with delight; and little Victoria was so frightened that she clambered out of her high-chair and ran to Captain Conn to be comforted.

“Hush, children, hush!” commanded Captain Conn. “See what you’ve done now. You’ve made Victoria cry with all your noise. Be quiet while Danny reads the letter.”

“Sure, it’s not a long letter,” said Danny; “but there’s good news in every line of it,” and he read it aloud while the Malones listened breathlessly.

“Kathleen dear:—” wrote Cousin Bee, “I’ve wonderful news for you,—so good that I don’t know how to begin it. Mary Ellen can see. It’s the truth that I’m writing. She can see as well as you can this minute.

“Patrick had the surgeon from the Boyle Hospital come over to see the child’s eyes in the winter, and he said it was a shame that nothing had been done for them before. Since then Mary Ellen has been going to Boyle every market-day, and at the last she was two weeks in the hospital there.

“The doctor said it wasn’t the smoke of the peat after all, but something else which I don’t understand; but he’s cured it, praise be!

“Mary Ellen wouldn’t let me tell you before, because she didn’t want you to be disappointed if nothing came of it; but now she’s sitting here beside me, looking at the words that will tell you the good news.

“We are all well and Patrick has a fine new heifer, but he says he’ll not sell it to Tim Keefe if he has to give it away.”

“It is wonderful news, indeed,” said Uncle Tom. “Our eyesight is a blessing we don’t appreciate till we miss it.”

“I wonder if Father knows about it,” said Kathleen. “I’d like to be the first one to tell him.”

“Perhaps you will be,” said Columba. “When are you going to meet him?”

And then the talking began all over again, because everyone wanted to see Uncle Jerry when he heard the good news; everyone wanted to go to the Giant’s Causeway; in fact, everyone wanted to start out and see the whole of Ireland that very morning.

“We’d go through Dublin,” suggested Columba, “and I could see Trinity College, where I’m going to study some day.”

“I would like to see the College Library,” said Feena. “It is one of the five great libraries of the kingdom, and has a copy of every book that’s published in Great Britain and Ireland.”

“Dublin is a beautiful city,” said Aunt Hannah. “There’s plenty of fine sights I’d like to show you all. There’s the River Liffey, and the canals, and Dublin Bay. Then there is St. Patrick’s Cathedral that is named in honor of the good saint, and the Bank of Ireland, and Phœnix Park.”

“There is O’Connell Street, too,” added Captain Conn. “It’s one of the widest streets in all Europe. I’d like to do some shopping there.”

O’Connell Street (formerly called Sackville Street), Dublin

Notice the O’Connell Monument and the Nelson Pillar. [ Page 102]

“We could see the O’Connell Monument and the Nelson Pillar in O’Connell Street,” suggested Deena, “and we’d get a splendid view of the city from the top of the Pillar.”

“Danny and I could stop at Belfast to see the linen mills,” Tara said to his father. “You said only yesterday it was time we were going up there to learn the business.”

“It is always easy to think of reasons for doing just what we want to be doing,” replied his father, “but it is time now to be thinking of going to work. We will talk about the journey later when we have more time for it.”

He must have found time to think of it during the day, and to talk it over with Aunt Hannah, too, for, wonder of wonders, before they went to bed that night it had been decided that Uncle Tom should take the whole family up to the North of Ireland the next week, to meet Uncle Jerry Barry, and to have a look at the Giant’s Causeway.