“Would those little girls feed the chickens and pigs, and drive the cow to pasture, as Kathleen did? Would the boys plant potatoes and work in the bog just the same as Danny? Was that the very school where Danny himself walked eight miles a day, one winter, to learn to figure?”
Before they reached the thatched cottage again, the postman had talked more than he had for many a day before, and Kathleen helped her little sister down from the car in a great hurry to run to Grandmother Barry and ask still other questions.
But Grandmother Barry had questions of her own to ask. “Sure, Kathleen alanna,” she began, “and how would you like to go down to Kilkenny and live with your Aunt Hannah?”
“When?” asked Kathleen breathlessly.
“As soon as the plans can be made,” answered her grandmother. “Your Aunt Hannah has sent the word in the letter the postman left; and your father has gone to fetch Danny and talk it over with him.”
“There they are now,” said Mary Ellen, her quick ear catching the sound of their footsteps, and the next moment Danny and his father were turning into the yard.
Then Mary Ellen held the wonderful letter while Kathleen looked it over and Father Jerry told what it said.
“Himself has been doing well in his business, praise be!” Aunt Hannah wrote, “and I’d like to do something for a child of my youngest brother, though he did take up with the tinker’s trade against my wishes; and him with the schooling.”
“That’s true,” said the shoemaker, looking up at the circle of faces. “Hannah begged me to take up teaching for a living. I had the learning for it, and it is an honorable calling in Ireland, and always has been. But I longed to see the whole of the green island, so I took on a trade that gave me a chance to travel over it.”
“’Tis of the chair in the chimney-corner at Barney’s house in Sligo, I’ve been thinking all the morn,” said Great-grandmother Connell. “Do you believe Barney has kept it waiting for me these ten years as he said he would?”