"Will you, mother?" cried the boy. "Will you promise me that?"
"Moike! Moike!" said the widow, touched by his eager look and tone, "what a b'y you are for questions! Would I be layin' all my burdens on you, when it's six brothers you've got? 'Twouldn't be fair to you. But to know you're so ready and willin' loightens my ivery load, and it's a comfort you are to me. Your father was always for makin' easy toimes for other people, and you're loike him, Moike. And now I've something else to be talkin' of. Will you be havin' the goose for Gineral and Mrs. Brady to-morrow?"
"I will, mother," answered Mike respectfully.
"Then, Moike, when you get ready to go back, you'll foind the foinest wan of the lot all by himsilf in a box Pat brought from the store. Mr. Farnham give it to him, though he mostly sells 'em. And I've larned that goose to slape in it, so I have, and an awful job it was, too. Geese and pigs now, Moike, are slow to larn. But he knows his place at last, so he does, and you'll foind him in it."
Then catching sight, around the corner of the table, of the enraptured two on the kitchen floor busy over the new family treasure, she cried: "Now, Barney and Tommie, to bed with you, and dream of havin' the sled Saturdays, for that's what you shall have. 'Tis Moike makes the treats for us all."
That evening at half-past nine there was a knock on the sitting-room door.
"Come!" called the General.
The door opened and in walked Mike with the sleek goose under his arm.
"My mother's sending you a goose, Mrs. Brady," he said with a bow.