Hopeless case! I thought, as I blew out the lamp and turned into my comfortable sofa-bed. If this morepoke's Irish love of knowledge was backed by one spark of mental enterprise, he might have half a ton of chosen literature to come and go on. And here he is, with his pristine ignorance merely dislocated.
When I woke at sunrise, Rory was kindling the fire, with the inseparable Mary squatted beside him in her nightgown. After putting on the kettle, he dressed the little girl, and helped her to wash her face. By this time, I was about; and Mary brought me a blank form, which I had dropped and overlooked the night before.
"Keep it till you learn to write, dear," said I.
"She ken write now," remarked Rory, with subdued exultation. "Here, jewel," he continued, handing her a pencil from the mantelpiece—"write yer name nately on that paper, fur Misther Collins till see."
The child, tremulous with an ecstatic sense of responsibility, bent over her paper on the table for a full minute, then diffidently pushed it across to me; and I read, in strong Roman capitals, the inscription, MRAY, with the M containing an extra angle—being, so to speak, a letter and a half.
"Ye're wake in spellin', honey," remarked her father merrily; "an' the M's got an exthry knuckle on it."
"It's right enough," I interposed. "Could n't be better. Now, Mary, I'll keep this paper, and show it to you again when you're a great scholar and a great poetess. See if I don't."
The entrance of Mrs. O'Halloran cut short this nonsense; and Rory went out to milk the goats, accompanied, of course, by Mary.
After breakfast, we took our bridles and went out toward where the five horses were feeding together, the inevitable child pattering along by Rory's side.
"You have a lot to be thankful for," I remarked.