It was scarcely more than a tumbled-down hut, with broken panes of glass more common than whole ones in the windows, these apertures stuffed with hats and discarded garments, while half the bricks had fallen from the chimney-top. There were half a dozen barefooted children running about, while a very wide and red-faced woman stood in the doorway.
“Hullo, me bye!” she called to Sammy, as he lingered outside the broken fence with a longing eye upon her. “Where be yez bound so airly in the marnin’?”
“I’m just traveling, Ma’am,” Sammy returned with much dignity. “Could—could you sell me some breakfast?”
“Breakfast, is it?” repeated the smiling woman. “Shure, I’d give yez it, if mate wasn’t so high now. Come in me kitchen and sit ye down. There’s tay in the pot, and I’ll fry yez up a spider full o’ pork and taters, if that’ll do yez?”
The menu sounded tempting indeed to Sammy. He accepted the woman’s invitation instantly and entered the house, past the staring children. The two oldest of the group, a shrewd-faced boy and a sharp-featured girl, stood back and whispered together while they watched the visitor.
Sammy was so much interested in the bountiful breakfast with which the housewife supplied him that he thought very little about the children peering in at the door and open windows. When he had eaten the last crumb he asked his hostess how much he should pay her.
“Well, me bye, I’ll not overcharge ye,” she replied. “If yez have ten cents about ye we’ll call it square—an’ that’s only for the mate, as I said before is so high, I dunno.”
Sammy produced the knotted handkerchief, put it on the table and untied it, displaying the coins it held with something of a flourish. The jingle of so many dimes brought a sigh of wonder in unison from the young spectators at door and windows. The woman accepted her dime without comment.
Sammy thanked her politely, wiped his mouth on his sleeve (napery was conspicuous by its absence in this household) and started out the door. The smaller children scattered to give him passage; the older boy and girl had already gone out of the badly fenced yard and were loitering along the road in the direction Sammy was traveling.
“Hullo! Here’s raggedy-pants,” said the girl saucily, when Sammy came along.