“Then you should be wearing the green for him this day,” said the peddler, and he showed proudly a big knot of green ribbon on one of the black-thorn sticks he carried, and a smaller knot on his worn coat. “Tell the truth now, that you clean forgot this is the seventeenth of March and St. Patrick’s Day in the morning.”
“Go away with you!” exclaimed Danny. “Where are your eyes, man? Don’t you see the green in my cap?”
Ireland is often called the Emerald Isle because of its setting of green fields and hills, and the national color, which is green, is seen everywhere. The English flag floats over the public buildings, but on holidays and feast-days the green flag of Erin decorates the houses, and on St. Patrick’s Day every one wears a bit of green in memory of the patron saint, and in honor of Ireland.
Danny, who had no green ribbon to wear to show his love for his country, had tucked a sprig of green shamrock into his cap, but now the tender leaves were wilted and hung drooping from their slender stems.
“It’s St. Patrick’s own little plant, and it was fresh and green enough when I found it beside the brook this morning,” he said, taking off his cap and touching the withered leaves tenderly as if he loved them.
“Come home with us now,” he added, turning to the peddler, “and we’ll give you a good Irish welcome and a bite and a sup.”
“I’ll gladly go with you and the childer here,” said the peddler heartily. So he helped the little girls fill their creels with the sods of dry peat and fastened a bit of shamrock on their dresses “for St. Patrick and old Ireland.” Danny finished up his work in a hurry, and soon they were all on their way back along the lonely path. But it was lonely no longer, for they sang as they marched along:
“There’s a dear little plant that grows in our Isle,
’Twas Saint Patrick himself, sure, that set it;
And the sun on his labor with pleasure did smile,