“Patrick had the surgeon from the Boyle Hospital come over to see the child’s eyes in the winter, and he said it was a shame that nothing had been done for them before. Since then Mary Ellen has been going to Boyle every market-day, and at the last she was two weeks in the hospital there.
“The doctor said it wasn’t the smoke of the peat after all, but something else which I don’t understand; but he’s cured it, praise be!
“Mary Ellen wouldn’t let me tell you before, because she didn’t want you to be disappointed if nothing came of it; but now she’s sitting here beside me, looking at the words that will tell you the good news.
“We are all well and Patrick has a fine new heifer, but he says he’ll not sell it to Tim Keefe if he has to give it away.”
“It is wonderful news, indeed,” said Uncle Tom. “Our eyesight is a blessing we don’t appreciate till we miss it.”
“I wonder if Father knows about it,” said Kathleen. “I’d like to be the first one to tell him.”
“Perhaps you will be,” said Columba. “When are you going to meet him?”
And then the talking began all over again, because everyone wanted to see Uncle Jerry when he heard the good news; everyone wanted to go to the Giant’s Causeway; in fact, everyone wanted to start out and see the whole of Ireland that very morning.
“We’d go through Dublin,” suggested Columba, “and I could see Trinity College, where I’m going to study some day.”
“I would like to see the College Library,” said Feena. “It is one of the five great libraries of the kingdom, and has a copy of every book that’s published in Great Britain and Ireland.”