“Well, the Irish bogs are not always easy travelling,” I answered, “but the Sally-baby will soon be old enough to feel the spring of the Irish turf under her feet.”
“What will the chickens and ducklings and pigeons do while we are gone?” asked Francie.
“An’ the lammies?” piped the Sally-baby, who has all the qualities of Mary in the immortal lyric.
“Oh! we won’t leave home until the spring has come and all the young things are born. The grass will be green, the dandelions will have their puff-balls on, the apple blossoms will be over, and Daddy will get a kind man to take care of everything for us. It will be May time and we will sail in a big ship over to the aunts and uncles in Scotland and Ireland and I shall show them my children—”
“And we shall play ‘hide-and-go-coop’ with their children,” interrupted Francie joyously.
“They will never have heard of that game, but you will all play together!” And here I leaned back on the warm haycock and blinked my eyes a bit in moist anticipation of happiness to come. “There will be eight-year-old Ronald MacDonald to climb and ride and sail with our Billy; and there will be little Penelope who is named for me, and will be Francie’s playmate; and the new little boy baby—”
“Proba’ly Aunt Francie’s new boy baby will grow up and marry our girl one,” suggested Billy.
“He has my consent to the alliance in advance,” said Himself, “but I dare say your mother has arranged it all in her own mind and my advice will not be needed.”
“I have not arranged anything,” I retorted; “or if I have it was nothing more than a thought of young Ronald or Jack La Touche in—another quarter,”—this with discreetly veiled emphasis.
“What is another quarter, mother?” inquired Francie, whose mental agility is somewhat embarrassing.