The folk of Furry Farm

by K. F. Purdon

There’s many a woman like that. And it may be right enough, as long as the child is helpless in your arms, because then they’re easily hurt. But it’s another case altogether when they begin to feel the little feet under them, and are able to run about. It was then that the real trouble began with little Bride.

Here’s how it was. Marg used to dress her up very grandly. Nothing was too good for the child. What could be got at Melia’s shop wouldn’t answer at all. So Marg would send off to Dublin, no less, by Tommy the Crab, that had got on well in the world since the morning he sold the pictures to poor Art and Rosy.... Tommy had a cart and horse now, and was a higgler; going about buying up ducks and chickens and so on. And he’d call in at the Furry Farm, and Marg would give him whatever eggs or fowl she had to sell; and he would bring her back all manner of fineries for little Bride, that he would choose when he’d be off in the Big Smoke; and very nice the child looked in what came out of the grand Dublin shop, Tommy being very tasty and experiented about such things.

But what matter how she looked? Who was there to take notice whether it was a puce frock or a pink one she’d have on? Not one, except Marg herself. The Furry Farm wasn’t a place that was apt to be much frequented by people happening in, and Bride was too little still to be taken where she’d be seen. She might as well have been dressed in sacks.

But if you do put good clothes on a child that size, you are making trouble for yourself, unless you can spend all your time watching them; the clothes, I mean. It would take a person all their time, running after one like little Bride, to keep her from doing destruction on her grandeur. Marg had plenty of other work that had to be done, so she began teaching the child the fashion of keeping quiet, and sitting on her creepy-stool in the corner. Brigeen was easily taught, being very biddable, so she’d sit there, quite good, till you’d have to pity her, waiting till Marg would give her leave to run out for a little while.

Too anxious poor Marg was about the child, in every way! afraid of being too kind to her, and spoiling her by too much love; a thing impossible, if it’s right love; and afraid, too, of ever being cross enough to say a harsh word to her, let alone to punish the child, and she without either father or mother to take her part. Many a mother with an only child is not half as careful as Marg was with little Bride, that wasn’t her own at all, except through her own goodness. If only Marg could have taken a leaf out of Kitty Grennan’s book! Kitty, that had a houseful of children to contend with by that time, but took things rough and ready, so that her long family was less bother to her than the one at the Furry Farm was to Marg.

Why, if little Bride cried...! But it was seldom that occurred. How could it? Bride was healthy and gay, and moreover had the best of care in every way. What had she to cry for?

And still in all, there’s one thing that none of us can do well without, and that is, liberty to do what we want in our own way. And as well, children want some one the same age as themselves, to be company to them. Now, little Brigid had neither friends nor freedom. And that was hard on her, although, God knows! Marg meant nothing but kindness.

The child began to be lonesome and forgotten-looking. Marg herself noticed it at times, and wondered what ailed her pet. She could not guess; but supposing she could, what was she to do? She might put her two eyes upon sticks, and it would be no use. A grown person can never go back and be a little child again. And that was what ailed little Bride mostly; the want of another child to play with.

Now, strange enough, it was old Moll Reilly that first really seemed to know what the child was pining for. Dark and all as she was, she’d find out things that were going on, often far better than them that had their sight. She was sitting inside at Heffernan’s one evening, Marg being gone off to the well, and Heffernan himself outside seeing about the business being done, so that only Moll and the child were in the kitchen. And little Bride, after standing for some time with her finger in her mouth, came sidling over to the stool where Moll was sitting by the fire, and crept in as close as she could to the old woman, as if for company.

“Why aren’t you off somewheres outside?” said Moll to the child, “playing about in the fields, where maybe you’d chance to meet up with the young Grennans? Or up on the Furry Hills? Grand it does be, there!”