CHAPTER XV[ToC]
A VISIT HOME
My Father had been begging me for years to come home and say good-bye to him; so, in 1901, I made the journey.
I hadn't been in the old home long before the alley was filled with neighbours, curious to have a look at "ould Jamie's son who was a clargymaan." I went to the door and shook hands with everybody in the hope that after a while they would go away and leave me with my own. But nobody moved. They stood and stared for several hours. "'Deed I mind ye fine when ye weren't th' height av a creepie!" said one woman, who was astounded that I couldn't call her by name.
"Aye," said another, "'deed ye were i' fond o' th' Bible, an' no wundther yer a clargymaan!"
A dozen old women "minded" as many different things of my childhood. I finally dismissed them with this phrase, as I dropped easily enough into the vernacular, "Shure, we'd invite ye all t' tay but there's only three cups in the house!"
My sister Mary and her four children lived with my father. We shut and barred the door when the neighbours left and sat down to "tay," which consisted of potatoes and buttermilk. Mary had been trying to improve on the old days but I interposed, and together, we went through the old régime. Father took the pot of potatoes to the old tub in which he used to steep the leather. There he drained them—then put them on the fire for a minute to allow the steam to escape.
"I'm going to 'kep' them," I said, and they both laughed.
"Oh, heavens, don't," he said; "shure they don't 'kep' pirtas in America!"