Finally Henry Clay Morton made a rhyme about him, and the others took it up. They never saw the old fellow without shouting to a sing-song tune that they had made themselves:
"Paddy on the Turnpike
Couldn't count eleven,
Put him on a leather bed,
Thought he was in Heaven."
[CHAPTER III.]
PADDY AND PEGGY
Not seeming to hear the children, the old man used to work in silence, gathering the bottles and rags and things and putting them in his bag. Once a week he sold all he had found and brought the money home to his wife.
Now Paddy and his wife lived in a little cottage on the far side of the common. And Paddy's wife was always sick. The poor woman had had a terrible accident in which she had been so badly crushed and twisted that she was never free from pain a single moment.
Paddy would rise early in the morning, and, before he left to go to his work, he would put her in her chair by the window so that she could look out on the common, and here she sat knitting socks all day long.
She did not know many people, so she was much alone. None of the neighbours in Jefferson Square were aware that such a person as Mrs. Paddy existed, though they might have seen her, if they had taken the trouble, every time they looked out of a front window; for she lived in plain view of all the dwellings on the Square.
But though none of the "well-bred" people ever knew of Mrs. Paddy's existence, sometimes the mother of the little outcasts who were too common to be the associates of fine ladies would drop in "to straighten things up a bit."