"They are not, miss," he answered, grinning. "They're all mine."
"All yours!" echoed Betty, and counted them again.
The man turned to the eldest girl.
"Mary Agnes, go bring the baby," he said; and Mary Agnes disappeared indoors, and came out presently with number eleven.
How they manage to live I don't know; but they do live, and, so far at least as the children are concerned, even grow fat. Their bright eyes and red cheeks spoke of anything but undernourishment, and it must take a large pot to hold enough to satisfy that family! How the pot is filled is the mystery.
Their home was typical of Connaught—and of the poorer part of all Ireland, indeed: a low cabin, built of stones and whitewashed, with two rooms, a dirt floor, a few pieces of rude furniture, a pile of straw and rags for a bed, and hardly enough clothes to go around. In fact, below the age of ten or twelve, it was impossible to tell the boys from the girls, for they were all dressed alike in a single garment, a sort of shift made of homespun flannel, and usually, I judge, cut out of the mother's old red petticoats; and boys and girls alike have their hair cropped close. All through Connemara we saw this fashion—a single rudely-made garment of wool, worn by the children of both sexes all the year round, without undergarment of any kind, without shoes or stockings. The flannel the garments are made of is practically indestructible, and I fancy they are taken off only when outgrown and passed on to the next youngest member of the family. When a boy outgrows it and is privileged to put on trousers, it is a proud day for him, for he ceases to be a mere petticoated "malrach" and becomes a "gossure."
Mary Agnes, the oldest member of this particular family, was a girl of sixteen, who was soon to leave for America to try her fortune; I don't know by what miracles of self-denial the money for her passage had been scraped together! She was an ugly girl, with bad teeth and stupid expression, and I am afraid she will find life no bed of roses, even here in America. The rest of the children went to school; and the nearest schoolhouse was five Irish miles away!
We went on at last, down past the other cabins, which are occupied by the men employed in the quarry. They were all faithful replicas of the one I have described, and they were all swarming with children. I never ceased to be astonished at these children, for though they were dirty and half-naked, they all seemed plump and healthy. Potatoes, I suppose, is the main article of their diet, for every cabin had its deep-trenched patch, won by back-breaking toil from the rocks of the hillside. That leisurely walk down into the green valley is unforgettable, the day was so bright, the air so fresh and sweet, the view so lovely.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon playing clock golf, and exploring the beautiful garden attached to the hotel; and that night we sat in front of a great open fire-place where a wood fire crackled, and luxuriated in the pleasant fatigue of a well-spent day. If I had known as much then as I do now, we would have spent other evenings there, for Recess is as good a point as any from which to explore Connaught, and the hotel there is immeasurably superior to any other in that section of Ireland—clean and bright and comfortable and well-managed, with food that was a pleasant variant from the unimaginative dishes we had grown so weary of. It has been built by the railroad company to encourage tourist traffic, and I don't see how it can pay; but, for the sake of travellers in that part of Ireland, I hope it will never be closed.