"Well, then, mother," prophesied Pat with a laughing backward glance, "I think Mike will be over to spend the evening with you." And he was off.
"And what does he mean by that?" wondered Mrs. O'Callaghan, looking after him. "There's somethin' astir. I felt it by the look of him."
She turned back and shut the door, and there was little Jim loitering as if he hardly knew whether to wash the dishes or not.
"'Tis the bank that's ahead of you, do you moind, Jim? Hurry up with your dish pan. Pat was sayin' maybe Mike'll be home this evenin'."
In response to this urging little Jim made a clatter with the dishes that might be taken by some to represent an increase of speed, but his mother was not of that number.
"Come, Jim," she said, "less n'ise. If you was hustlin' them thin china dishes of Mrs. Gineral Brady's loike that there'd be naught left of 'em but pieces—and dirty pieces, too, for they'd all be broke before you'd washed wan of 'em."
"I ain't never goin' to wash any of Mrs. Gineral Brady's dishes," remarked Jim calmly.
"You're young yet, Jim, to be sayin' what you're goin' to do and what not," was the severe response. "At your age your father would niver have said he would or he would not about what was a long way ahead of him, for your father was wise, and he knowed that ne'er a wan of us knows what's comin' to us."
But Jim's countenance expressed indifference. "Gineral Brady's got a bank without washin' dishes for it," he observed.