The road lay between fields a-bloom with red poppies and daisies. Occasionally groups of barefooted girls passed by and there was many a lounger by the wayside smoking his afternoon pipe,—which might with equal truth also be called his morning pipe and his noonday and evening pipe.
At last the car paused in front of a little stone cottage set in the midst of a small plot of ground. A woman was sitting in the doorway peeling potatoes and a tall pretty girl about Elinor’s own age came running around the side of the house with a basket of eggs.
“I be bringin’ a visitor for you, owld woman,” the man called pleasantly. “A young loidy from the States who is acquainted from some of the Butler fam’ly.”
“And indade, news of the Butler fam’ly will be like the sound of swate music to your ears, Tom,” called the woman.
Elinor started violently.
“Are you Thomas Butler?” she demanded.
“Shure, an’ I’m the mon,” he answered amiably. “I’m Thomas Butler as was soundin’ his own praises a while ago. If a mon don’t sound his own praises, there’s no one ilse as will do it for him.”
The other girls laughed, relieved to give vent to their repressed feelings. So these were Elinor’s much-boasted relations! Poor, proud Elinor, who always wore her hair in a coronet braid because she secretly believed her ancestors were of royal blood! They tacitly determined to leave the situation entirely in her hands, and when Elinor, whose face wore the expression of one who is about to take a bad dose of medicine, descended from the cart, they followed and shook hands with Mrs. Thomas Butler and her daughter, Eileen. Presently the jovial Thomas hitched his horse and came into the house after them.
There was not much furniture in the room in which they had been hospitably invited to sit down,—a table and a few chairs; a set of shelves whereon stood the household china, and a few cooking utensils. The floor was paved with stone slabs. On the mantel ticked a small wooden clock between two brass candlesticks, such as are used at all Irish wakes to stand at the head of the coffin. The room was unceiled at the top and crossed with smoke-blacked rafters. Chickens walked fearlessly in and out and a little fat pig stuck his nose in at the back door and grunted at them.
Eileen brought in a pitcher of milk and four thick glasses and shyly placed them on the table.