“Mary Ellen, dear, did you ever think it would be so fine to live out of Donegal?”
“No,” answered the little sister, “I’ve been thinking of the market ever since Saturday; and yesterday was the walk to Lough Gara again, and to-day is the sheep-shearing. Belike by Friday they will begin to cut the turf. It is better than Donegal, even if Father is not with us.”
“Oh, Mary Ellen, I doubt they’ll begin cutting out peat on a Friday. It will bring them bad luck.”
“Perhaps they will begin on Thursday, then,” suggested her sister. “Is there any ill luck in that day?”
It was a beautiful morning toward the end of May, and the two little girls were watching the shearing of the sheep at Uncle Barney’s farm. More than a hundred bleating sheep and lambs were collected near the house, where they were guarded by a trained shepherd dog and watched over by Kathleen.
“Kathleen is the colleen that’s good at everything,” Patrick said one day after the picnic at Lough Gara. “She’ll milk a cow as well as ever her great-grandmother Connell did. She’s got the firm hand for it, and the sweet voice.”
“She can bake as fine a loaf of bread as I can, and that is saying a good deal, too,” said Bee proudly.
“I’ll see what kind of a shepherd lass she will make, come shearing-time,” said Uncle Barney, who had come over from Killaraght to get Danny to help him. “We’ll need some one to keep the sheep from straying away after they have been washed.”
So Kathleen was watching the sheep for her uncle, and talking over the Saturday market with her sister.
“Sure, I thought Bee’s little pig would squeal himself black in the face before she got him sold,” said Mary Ellen.