The little girl at Grennan’s was called after Marg herself, and Kitty used to let her have the baby on the floor to nurse him.
“Och, never fear for them!” said Kitty; “here! I’ll put the two of them outside the door with a pinch of sugar ... there now, Maggie; be good and don’t be annoying me and I busy with Mrs. Heffernan; and take care of the baby....”
Kitty never was one to have much talk about her babies, and in particular when Marg that had none was by. But Kitty was right, to let them mind themselves, and learn to do that, by being left alone. If you’re always watching a child, and warning it about falling and so on, it will never learn to be handy with the little feet or anyway independent.
Kitty settled the children outside, then, and that left the kitchen quiet, so that she could give Marg the cup of tea in peace and quiet, and have a chat.
“I suppose,” said Kitty, while she was cooling a sup of her tea in the saucer, “I suppose you heard tell of the American that’s beyant in Clough-na-Rinka?”
“How would I hear,” said Marg; “that never goes anywhere, except to the chapel, from one year’s end to the other!”
“I wonder at that!” said Kitty, “but there he is, this len’th of time, stopping with the Widdah Grogan; and has her heart-scalded, by what I hear, with his grand, particular ways! Wanting beefsteaks and pie for his dinner, no less! as if he was a lord. And as for the talk he does have out of him...!”
“Americans does mostly always be that way,” says Marg; “quare notions they have, there beyant....”
“And for all that,” said Kitty, “in ways, you’d think him real innocent; don’t ask the use of a bedroom at all, so he’s no trouble that way ... go away now, Mags! and don’t be annoying me....”
Marg watched, while Kitty hunted the little girl again out of the kitchen, to where she had the baby laid in a turf-basket; and Marg wondered to herself, how Kitty could bear to have them out of her sight. But she said nothing about that, only, “Has no bed! that’s a quare way to be going on!”