"That's the very way the lid of our ould kettle would be goin' at home when it was on the boil, and me poor mother 'ud bid us keep an eye on it—like enough to keep us out of divilmint. Och, but that was a cosy little room of a could night. D'you mind it, Thady?"
"Ay, sure," said Thady, "but it's one while ago."
"It is that. A matter of thirty year and more, anyway, since we owned the little shop. Sure now I remimber the day they shut it up, and put us out of it, as plain as if it was on'y this mornin'. Grand we that was childer thought it, because of somebody givin' us the ind of an ould jar of sweets out of the windy to pacify us. Bedad the fightin' we had over it was fit to ha' raised the town. But I grabbed meself a biggish lump of peppermint twist, and would be slinkin' behind me mother to finish it, and she talkin' at the door to ould Mrs. McClenaghan, and I heard her sayin' her heart was broke. So I got wond'rin' to myself if the raison was maybe that we'd ate it all on her. Och, but it's the quare foolishness people does be remimberin'!"
"Belike the raison of that is because it's as plinty as anythin' else wid thim," said Thady, cynically, "or maybe a trifle plintier."
"Sure we was on'y brats thim times," said Judy, apologetically. "For anythin' we could tell we might as well be streelin' about under the width of the sky like a string of wild duck, as stoppin' at home wid a roof over our misfort'nit heads. Ould Mrs. McClenaghan next door had a cloak the same pattern as this," Judy continued, selecting her memories with better judgment. "But 'twas all tatters at the bottom, not worth a bawbee to mine."
And Thady said with interest: "Had she now?"
"And as for me ould shawl," Judy went on, "it's been a scandal and a caution this last three or four year; droppin' in bits it is, and small blame to it. I wish I'd a penny for every mile I've tramped in it. Do you remimber the joke me mother had about it's bein' a conthráry thing that people thravellin' 'ud always begin a mile at the wrong ind? She'd be talkin' that way to hearten up me father; but as often as not he'd on'y let a roar at her to whisht, he was that discouraged. 'Twas a great wish he had, poor man, to git her back settled in a little place of her own before he was took. But 'twas in the big barracks of a Union at Monaghan——"
"Well, it's all one to the two of thim now anyway," said Thady, finding that Judy's reminiscences of their family history did not tend to enliven his meditations over his pipe.
"Ah sure, everythin' will be all one to the whole of us, plase God, one of these days," said Judy, who in her present mood could not easily have realised the keen contentions and scorching jealousies of the night before; "and when we get done with the thrampin', 'twill make little enough differ whether it's one mile we wint or twinty hunderd. On'y I'd liefer than a good dale thim two had had better luck wid it all. Cruel put about they were many a time, and wantin' the bit to keep the life in thim, and it just fretted out of thim in the ind I'm thinkin'. The thought of it comes agin a body when one's sittin' warm and snug," Judy said, gazing remorsefully round her shadowy, gusty lodging, and then into the flames, lighting up a bare earth-patch, and down at the dark folds that fell about her as she crouched on it. She seemed sunk into a reverie. But after a while she looked up and said without apparent relevance: "Heaven be her bed this night, the cratur. Thady, you heathen, we'd a right to be sayin' the Rosary before we git too stupid altogether. The eyes of you are droppin' into your head wid sleep this minnit."
"And me just after lightin' me pipe," remonstrated Thady.