CHAPTER V
THE LITTLE GREEN SHAMROCK
“Look, Kathleen,” said Grandmother Barry, as the two children reached the cottage door, “there’s not another sod of peat in the house. Run down to Farmer Flynn’s to meet Danny, and tell him to bring some home with him.”
“I’ll get the small creel Danny made for me, and bring some home myself,” said Kathleen, running into the cottage.
She was out again in a moment with two light wicker baskets. “Here’s your creel, too, Mary Ellen,” she said, and hung it carefully over her sister’s shoulders.
Farmer Flynn lived a mile away on a big sheep farm, and Kathleen was glad to be sent there for peat. She liked the work and bustle of the farm life and always saw something new and interesting. Sometimes there were baby lambs in the sheepfold, sometimes she saw a calf or a pair of young donkeys, and then, best of all, there was the big flock of white geese that belonged to the farmer’s wife.
Kathleen loved to watch the geese, and she often told Mary Ellen funny stories about them and their strange ways. “I’m going to ask Mrs. Flynn to let me tend them for her next summer,” she had confided to her sister. “That will be one way to earn pennies for your eyes, darlin’.”
Danny had worked for the farmer ever since the winter his father had brought them all to live in Donegal. He had been a pale, shy little lad at first, but now he was grown strong and sturdy, “able to do a day’s work with the best of them,” he said proudly.
Farmer Flynn was proud of him, too, and often said, “I made of Dan Barry the man that he is. He can thatch a roof or shear a sheep to-day as well as I can myself.”
And whenever little Kathleen caught the farmer’s eye she would stand straighter to hear him say, “There’s a fine slip of a lass. She’ll be a good woman and a pride to you, Danny my boy.”