"You know my boy, the pulse of my heart—Roderick?"
"Yes," I answered. "I know him, I may say, well."
A look of trouble suddenly replaced the brightness of Granny Meehan's face.
"Then know too that if Roderick sets his eyes on Miss Winifred, we'll never see her more here in the old land."
There was something indescribably mournful in her tone.
"Himself will take her," she went on; "and who can say that his new wife will give her a mother's love or a mother's care?"
"He has no new wife!" I said—"no wife at all; and perhaps, among us, we can win him back to the old world—to Ireland, to Wicklow."
"Say that again, asthore machree!" cried the old woman,—"that he has no wife at all. Oh, then, sure there's hope for him comin' back!"
"Niall has made it a condition of his consent to Winifred's going," I observed, "that Roderick shall not see his child nor know of her presence in New York till the old man gives the signal."
"The old rap!" cried Granny, with sudden ire. "'Tis like him, the marplot, the—but the Lord forgive me what I'm sayin'! And hasn't he been a father to the little one, with all his queer ways and his strayin' about the hills when others were in their beds?"