"Ah, but Mrs. Thompson's the jewel!" cried Mrs. O'Callaghan on Monday evening. "She do be sayin' that Larry's a cute little fellow, and she has him in to play where she is, and he gets to hear the canary bird sing, so he does. Didn't I be tellin' you, Pat, that I knew there was them in this town would help me that way? But what makes you all look so glum? Didn't you foind the school foine the day? Niver moind! You ain't acquainted yet. And jist remember that iverybody has a deal to bear in this world, and the poor most of all. If anybody does you a rale wrong, come tell me of it. But if it's only nignaggin', say naught about it. 'Twon't last foriver, anyway, and them that's mane enough to nignag a poor b'y is too mane to desarve attintion, so they are."
The widow looked searchingly at her older sons. She saw them, under the tonic of her sound counsel, straighten themselves with renewed courage, and she smiled upon them.
"I'll niver be makin' Tim's b'ys weak-spirited by lettin' 'em tittle-tattle of what can't be helped," she thought.
"Now, b'ys, heads up and do your bist!" she said the next morning as she went to her work.
But it was one thing to hold up their heads at the shanty, and quite another to hold them up on the noisy, swarming campus where they knew nobody, and where the ill-bred bullies of the school felt free to jeer and gibe at their poor clothing and their shy, awkward ways.
"Patrick O'Callaghan!" yelled Jim Barrows derisively.
It was recess and the campus was overflowing with boys and girls, but Pat was alone. "Just over from the 'ould coonthry'," he continued. "You can tell by his clothes. He got wet a-comin', and just see how they've shrunk!"
The overgrown, hulking fellow lounged closer to the tall and slender Irish boy, followed by the rough set that acknowledged him as a leader. Some measured the distance from the ends of Pat's jacket sleeves to his wrists, while others predicted the number of days that must elapse before his arms burst through the sleeves.
The spirit of the country-bred boy quailed before this coarse abuse, which he knew not how to resent. He glanced about him, but no way of escape offered. He was hemmed in. And then the bell struck. Recess was over. He thought of his brothers in different grades from himself, though in the same building. "Is there them that makes it hot for 'em when they can?" he said anxiously to himself. "We'll have to be stayin' more together mornin's and noons and recesses, so we will."
But staying together did not avail. Jim Barrows and his set found more delight in tormenting several unresisting victims than they could possibly have enjoyed with only one.