A light dawned upon him; not, alas, from his own childhood, which had been poor and sordid enough, and held no such golden make-believes, though in other ways he had entered into the beautiful kingdom to the utter forgetting of cold and hunger, want and sorrow, but from what he had heard here and there from little lips in his long journey through life. He had always been the children’s friend. He looked into her anxious eyes, therefore, and winked slowly.
“Whist, now! your Christmas letther,” he said, “an’ that’s what,—the wan that towld me how to set to work. Come, say the list over slow till I see if we both mane the same thing.”
She put up her hand, and dragged his head down until his ear was on a level with her lips; then she poured in the secret, interrupted by happy bursts of laughter.
“Begorra, the stockin’ will have to be made av injy rubber, or’t will burrst intoirely.”
“I’m going to put a chair under,” she confided hurriedly, “and if the things won’t go quite in you can leave them there. Did you ’member ’em all? The little crosses low on the paper I meant for kisses, you know.”
“Howly St. Pathrick! I was afther thinkin’ they was extrys.”
“You must get a most ’normous lot of letters,” she said thoughtfully, a moment later.
“’Twould be aisier countin’ the sands on the sayshore than to count thim,” he answered, entering heartily into his rôle of the jolly saint, “me secretarries an’ under-secretarries niver rest at all; they do be dhroppin’ wid fatague, the poor fellies! ’Tis entries they have to make, an’ double-entries, an’ charges an’ counter-charges, an’ I must give each wan my speshul suprevision—”
“Do you burn our letters up after you’ve read them?”
“Do I look like a man as wud desthroy his love-letters, alanna, fer that’s what they are? Not me! I’ve the walls av me mansion papered wid thim, an’ I’ve autygraph quilts an’ tablecloths made out av thim, an’ curt’ins to me doors an’ windys, an’ sofy-pillers an’ chair-sates,—oh, ’tis an injaneyus mind I have. Sure, the shtuff av drames makes foine wearin’ material, an’ don’t ye fergit it. I had to build an appindix to me house year before last, an’ last year there was an addenda, an’ this year I’m goin’ to t’row out an L, an’ if things continny the same I’ll have to add the whole alphabet before I know it.”