“Well, then, indeed I’m no great shakes, sir, and only among the middins; I’m gettin’ into years, ye see.”
“What nonsense!” stooping to pick up a live sod. “You can’t be more than fifty, if you are that.”
“I am fifty-seven, sir, and it’s a long age for a working woman; still,” and she sighed, “but God is good, and the devil himself not too bad entirely. And Mary is a grand help—and here she comes.”
As the inner door opened, Mary, followed by the dogs with better manners, entered with a tin can on her arm.
“Now go out, every one of you!” shouted their master, authoritatively. “Good evening, Mary.”
“Good evening, sir,” she answered. “Sure, the poor dogs is doing no harm whatever. Me mother loves a dog, and so do I. ’Tis only the cat that’s so particular.”
“And there she is, on the top of the dresser, out of harm’s way. I was sorry for poor John,” he said, addressing himself to Katty; “you must miss him.”
“In troth and I do, at every turn—a sore loss, both outside and in. Mary and me is not aqual to more than a couple of cows, and a few hens, and the potatoes.”
“And who does the digging?” inquired the younger master, who stood with his back to the fire, for all the world as if he were at home—the dogs with manners lying near the door.