“To-morrow night. He’ll have been dead two days thin.”
“It’s hard for the livin’ brother. An’ how does he bear it, Snodine?”
“As he does everything else. Divil a tear, Clarine tould me.”
“Well, it’s hard to understand the loikes of him.”
“It’s right ye are,” said Snodine. “Niver a tear for the poor mad sister, nor even a wan for the dead brother have he shed yet.”
“Just you wait, me darlint, ’til the kayner strikes up the mournin’. It’s many a dry eye I’ve seen over the dead ’til the kayners opened the heart, and thin, faith, the tears came fast enough.”
“It’s a hard world, indade—a botherin’ world,” said Snodine, wiping her eyes, sympathetically, with the back of her hand, although there were no tears in them.
“I’m thinkin’ that now,” said Terence. “Now yer go back, and mind the childer and don’t be afther botherin’ me whin it’s workin’ I am.”
With these lover-like words Terence again shouldered his spade and walked off towards the maple grove, while Snodine made her way homeward to extend her motherly care to her family of nine, which, when stood in a row according to age, made one think of a flight of stairs.
And what of the mad lady?