"Is it yersilf that's come, me lady?" she said, a slight flush of pleasure lighting up the pale, sad face.
"Yes, Bridget," said Mrs. Wright, "and I have brought my daughter, whom you have not seen for a long time."
"Ah, me darlint," she said, grasping Chrissy's hand, "Moike is a gud husband to me. He has a big, koind Irish heart, but one night when he came home he wasn't hisself, Moike wasn't, and he kicked me and the swate lamb there," pointing to a fat dumpling of a baby, "out of the door, and thin he locked it forninst me, Moike did; and I entrated him to let me in, but he would not; so I ran over the shnow through the fields to Joe Larocque's shanty, and I tuk off me skurt to roll the wee darlint in, for she was cryin' with the could, an' I ran to the shanty. For shure I was in my bare feet, an' when at last I reached Larocque's he was afeared to let me come in, he was, an' I prayed him for the sake o' the Blessed Virgin and all the holy angels to open the door, an' afther a long toime he did."
"Poor Moike," she said, with a look of agony in her face; "he's a gud man, a gud man, but he was not hisself—it was the dhrink that did it."
"There now, Bridget," said Mrs. Wright, "you have talked enough; you had better keep quite still while I remove these bandages."
The odor from the poor frozen hands and feet was frightful, but patiently and tenderly they removed the old bandages and applied new ones, after first saturating them in linseed oil and lime water. Before they had finished, the patient, overcome with exhaustion, sank back into a state of semi-unconsciousness, repeating the sad words over and over again:
"Poor Moike, he's gud, he's gud; but he wasn't hisself."
"I am afraid," whispered Mrs. Wright, "that mortification has set in. Did you observe that she had no feeling in the right foot while we were dressing it? Poor soul! Her sufferings will soon be over—perhaps to-night."
The tears streamed down Chrissy's face as she looked first at the poor sufferer, then at the innocent babe so soon to become motherless.
"I think, mother," she said, "that you had better leave me with her, for the Larocques can only come over once a day, and Mike has evidently no idea of how to take care of a sick woman, much less a baby. Could you not take him with you? Tell him that father wants him, for he said only this morning that he wanted more men."