To-night he had come home again, and this time he had brought three dollars with him.
"I told you I'd not be takin' it, Pat, and I won't nayther." Though the widow would not touch the coin, she looked lovingly at her son and went on, "It's ginerous you are, loike your father, but you're helpin' me enough when you take your board off my hands. You must save your money to buy clothes for yoursilf, for you need 'em, Pat dear. Mrs. Brady can't be puttin' up with too badly dressed help. Now don't you be spakin' yet," she continued, as she saw him about to remonstrate. "It's a skame of my own I've got that I want to be tellin' you about, for it's a comfort you are to me, Pat. Many's the mother as can't say that to her oldest son, and all on account of the son bein' anything but a comfort, do you see? But I can say it, Pat, and mean it, too. A comfort you are to me."
Pat smiled as he listened.
"Do you know, Pat," pursued his mother earnestly, "as I'm goin' to my washin' places, I goes and comes different ways whiniver I can, for what's the use of always goin' the same way loike a horse in a treadmill when you don't have to? Course, if you have to, that's different.
"Well, Pat, sure there's an awful lot of cows kept in this town. And I've found out that most of 'em is put out to pasture in Jansen's pasture north of the railroad. It runs north most to the cemetery, I'm told. But what of that when the gate's at this end? You don't have to drive the cows no further than the gate, Pat, dear. And the gate you almost passes when you're goin' to Gineral Brady's by the back way up the track. It's not far from us, by no manes."
Pat's face expressed surprise. Did his mother want him to drive cows in addition to his other work?
"Now all these cows. Pat," continued his mother impressively, "belongs wan cow at a house. I don't know but wan house where they kapes more, and their own b'ys does the drivin', and that wouldn't do us no good. The pay is fifty cents a month for drivin' a cow out in the mornin' and drivin' it back at night, and them drivin' b'ys runs 'em till the folks, many of 'em, is wantin' a different koind of b'ys. Now what if I could get about ten cows, and put Andy and Jim to drive 'em turn about, wan out and the other back. Wouldn't that be a good thing? Five dollars a month to put to the sixteen I earn a-washin', and not too hard on the b'ys, nayther. Don't you think 'twould be a good thing, Pat?"
"I do, indeed, mother," answered the son approvingly.
"I knowed you would, and I belave your father would. How is it you come to be so like him, Pat, dear? The blessed angels know. But you're a comfort to me. And now will you help me to get the cows? If you could get a riference, I belave they calls it, from the Gineral, for we're mostly strangers yet. You can say you know Andy and Jim won't run the cows."