“I wonder, is he grown any bigger? He was little better than a dwarf when he went away, and the same age as yourself. No, indeed, he was older,—fourteen months older. It was Catty Henderson was running in my head. Is n't she a fine young woman, Joe?”
“Remarkably so,” said he, with more animation in his tone.
“A little bit too haughty-looking and proud, maybe, considering her station in life, and that she has to go to service—”
“Go to service, mother?”
“To be sure she has. If they can't get her a place as a governess or a companion, she 'll have to take what she can get. Her father's married again, my dear Joe; and when men do that!” And here Mrs. Nelligan uplifted her hands and eyes most expressively. “Ay, indeed,” continued she, with a heavy sigh, “and if it was once it was fifty times, Catty's poor mother said to me, 'Sarah,' says she,—she never called me Sally, but always Sarah,—'Sarah,' says she, 'I 've but one comfort, and that is that Catty will never want a mother while you live. You 'll be the same to her as myself,—just as fond, and just as forgiving;' them was her very words!”
“And I hope you have never forgotten them, mother?” said Joe, with emotion.
“Don't you see I have n't; an't I repeating them to you this minute?”
“Yes; but I mean the spirit and the meaning of them,” rejoined he, “and that you feel the obligation they 've laid upon you.”
“To be sure I feel it; don't I fret over it every time I 'm alone? for I can't get it out of my head that maybe she 'd appear to me—”
“No, but her mother. Oh, it 's nothing to laugh at, Joe. There was Eliza Keane came back every Easter Monday for two-and-twenty years to search for a gravy-spoon. Well, if it's laughing you are, I won't say any more; but here 's the car now, and it's late enough we 'll be on the road!”