“I can’t,” said Bride, “because me mammy doesn’t like me to be anywhere that she can’t see me. Sometimes I do be put out into the yard, where she can be keeping an eye on me from the house; and she shuts the big gate that opens out into the fields ... the way I’ll be safe from the cows ... but they come to the other side of the gate and look through it at me with their wicked ould eyes ... and I do be afeard of them.... And all round the yard, there’s walls and sheds, too high to look over.... Only there’s one little spot where the wall is all broken and very low down ... and it’s there I do mostly go; where the little old bits of a house are....”
“And what do you be doing there, alanna?” said Moll.
“Making a chaney-house,” said little Bride; “all the old jugs and cups that gets broken, me mammy gives them to me, and I have a big big round stone there to make them into little bits.... I’d bring you there, only you’d not be able to see how grand I have it!”
“That’s a quare place for you to be! and do you never be lonesome there without one only yourself?” said Moll.
And little Brigid laughed, and said, “Indeed and I’m not lonesome! there does always be some one with me there, where I make the chaneys....”
“Your mammy, is it?” says Moll.
“No, no! it’s not me mammy!” said Brigid, looking down at the floor and then all round the kitchen as if she was puzzled; “it’s ... it’s some one ... I don’t know....”
“What are they like, that do be there with you?” asked Moll.
Brigid made no answer to this, but began twisting her little hands together, and kicking one foot to and fro. And there was no more to be said then, for here was Marg back with her can of water swinging by her side; and Heffernan himself, limping in to look for his tea. And the kettle hadn’t boiled, and the fire was low, and things seemed all behindhand.
Marg fed the child, and thought to get her off to her bed at once. But whatever queer spirit was in little Bride, whether it could have been that she was excited by the talk she had been having with Moll about the old bits of ruined wall and her chaney-house and the “some one” that was always there with her or not, it’s hard to say; only Marg could get no good of her at all. She would do nothing she was bid, only running this way and that way, and laughing when Marg pretended to get angry with her.