Yes, and back again!”
With the last words the two little girls clasped hands and ran round and round the great stone slab, not hearing their father’s voice calling to them from his bench.
As the children dropped upon the stone he called more sharply, “Kathleen! Do you hear me?”
“I hear you, but I do not fear you,” answered Kathleen, leading Mary Ellen to her father’s side. She put her arm around his neck and kissed his patient face, then seated herself on his knee.
“I used to fear you,” she said with a laugh, “after Granny Connor told me you had made a bargain with the leprecaun, and that you had a secret hiding-place.”
“And now it’s no secret at all, at all,” her father said. “The grandmother has learned it, too, and will be calling you down to run errands the minute she lays eyes on you here.”
“We were both helping her, the morn,” said Mary Ellen.
“What were you doing, jewel?” asked the father of the little blind child.
“Oh, reddin’ up the house,” replied Mary Ellen. “Kathleen swept the floor, and I wiped the dishes, and then I held the yarn for Grandma Connell. She is knitting you some stockings.”
“Yes,” added Kathleen, “and I drove the little dun cow to the pasture beyond the bog; and on my way home I pulled some rushes to make a new brush for the hearth.”