This had been some days before Amy drew the diagram of the house, which she now tossed into the waste-basket. From that it was rescued by the half-wit and treasured carefully; for to the purpose formed in his mind it would prove a great help.
"But go on, mother dear. What's the other sort of charity you mean?"
"That by all the advantages which we have had over these new neighbors we should be helpful to them. We possess nothing of our own, absolutely, not even our better training and—"
"Arrah musha! Sure the pullet was bad enough, but this baby'll be me death! An' me steppin' me great foot—There, there, darlin'. Cry no more, cry no more!"
The interruption was Cleena, and the cause "Sir" William Gladstone.
"Again, Goodsoul," jeered Amy.
"Again is it? An' me goin' down that hill betimes this mornin' to remind me neighbor as how it wasn't necessary to send all the childer up here to wonst. Not all!"
One of the first things which Cleena had made Fayette do was cut and smooth a path from the door of "Charity House" to that of the cottage below. She foresaw that there would be frequent errands to and fro, and the loose stones, with the tangle of running blackberry vines, were dangerous to life and limb. Then, because Hallam's lameness was also in her mind, she had persuaded the mill boy to add a row of driven stakes with rope strung along their tops.
"But never at all has Master Hal, for whom it was made, gone down or up by that same. Me fathers, what's a body to do!"