During the six months that my sister resided in York she wrote a few contributions for Aunt Judy's Magazine. To the number for January 1879 she gave "Flaps," a sequel to "The Hens of Hencastle."
The latter story was not written by her, but was a free adaptation which Colonel Yeatman-Biggs made from the German of Victor Blüthgen. Julie had been greatly amused by the tale, but, finding that it ended in a vague and unsatisfactory way, she could not be contented, so took up her pen and wrote a finale, her chief aim being to provide a happy ending for the old farm-dog, Flaps himself, after whom she named her sequel. The writing is so exactly similar to that of "The Hens," that the two portions can scarcely be identified as belonging to different writers. Julie used often to reproach me for indulging in what John Wesley called "the lust of finishing," but in matters concerning her own art she was as great an offender on this score as any one else!
Julie gave a set of verses on "Canada Home" to the same number as "Flaps," and to the March (1879) number she gave some other verses on "Garden Lore." In April the second part of "We and the World" began to appear, and a fresh character was introduced, who is one of the most important and touching features of the tale. Biddy Macartney is a real old Irish melody in herself, with her body tied to a coffee-barrow in the Liverpool Docks, and her mind ever wandering in search of the son who had run away to sea. Jack, the English hero, comes across Biddy in the docks just before he starts as a stowaway for America, and his stiff, crude replies to her voluble outpourings are essentially British and boy-like:—
"You hope Micky 'll come back, I suppose?"
"Why wouldn't I, acushla? Sure, it was by reason o' that I got bothered with the washin' after me poor boy left me, from my mind being continually in the docks instead of with the clothes. And there I would be at the end of the week, with the captain's jerseys gone to old Miss Harding, and his washing no corricter than hers, though he'd more good-nature in him over the accidents, and iron-moulds on the table-cloths, and pocket-handkerchers missin', and me ruined intirely with making them good, and no thanks for it, till a good-natured sowl of a foreigner that kept a pie-shop larned me to make the coffee, and lint me the money to buy a barra, and he says, 'Go as convanient to the ships as ye can, mother: it'll ease your mind. My own heart,' says he, laying his hand to it, 'knows what it is to have my body here, and the whole sowl of me far away.'"
"Did you pay him back?" I asked. I spoke without thinking, and still less did I mean to be rude; but it had suddenly struck me that I was young and hearty, and that it would be almost a duty to share the contents of my leather bag with this poor old woman, if there were no chance of her being able to repay the generous foreigner.
"Did I pay him back?" she screamed. "Would I be the black-hearted thief to him that was kind to me? Sorra bit nor sup but dry bread and water passed me lips till he had his own again, and the heart's blessings of owld Biddy Macartney along with it."
I made my peace with old Biddy as well as I could, and turned the conversation back to her son.
"So you live in the docks with your coffee-barrow, mother, that you may be sure not to miss Micky when he comes ashore?"