The two children, with their creels on their backs, ran down the little lane behind the house, followed the brook which chattered over the rocks at the foot of the heather glen, crossed the bog and climbed the hill, and then, at a quick turn of the path, there they were at the peat-shed, and there was Danny standing at the door.
He was talking with a strange man who carried a bundle of blackthorn sticks on his back; but just as the little girls came around the corner Danny shook his head and turned to go into the shed.
“Oh, Mary Ellen,” said Kathleen, “there’s a peddler and he’s trying to sell Danny a shillalah.”
“He’ll not do it,” said Mary Ellen. “Sure, Danny’s saving every odd shilling he earns. He has them in an old stocking, and he shook them out and let me count them. He has near a pound.”
“The peddler has a bundle of fine big sticks,” said Kathleen, “but not one of them is as thick and strong as the blackthorn Father has from Great-grandfather Connell. I’m thinkin’ Danny will have that some day.”
The peddler smiled pleasantly at the two little girls as they drew nearer, and put his hand so gently on Mary Ellen’s curly head that Kathleen took a liking to him at once.
“Where’s your bit of green ribbon?” he asked with a laugh, looking at the blue homespun dresses as if he thought they ought to be trimmed with green.
Kathleen looked up into her brother’s face to see if he knew what the stranger meant by the question.
Before Danny could tell her the peddler added, “Mayhap you never heard of our good St. Patrick in these parts,” and he laughed again as if he thought this question a better joke than the other.
“We know St. Patrick well,” said Kathleen. “It’s not more than a day’s journey from here to his mountain in County Mayo, where he drove all the snakes out of Ireland into the sea.”