"You are very kind children," she said. She began to fumble in a bag by her side. "Here is a shilling each for you."
The yellow carriage went on. Fly and Honeybird looked at each other. Honeybird was thinking how glad she was that she had stayed with Fly and had not gone off with the others. Fly was thinking how good Almighty God had been to hear her prayer. They went on down the road to Johnnie M'Causland's shop, and bought lemonade and sweets, and then struck out across the fields towards the sea to find the others.
"Do ye know what?" said Fly, stopping in the middle of a field, with her arms full of lemonade bottles. "Ye're always far happier after ye're miserable. I believe He done it on purpose." She kicked up her heels. "Let's run; it's a quare good ould world, an' God's a quare good ould God, an' I'm awful happy."
CHAPTER XIII
JIMMIE BURKE'S WEDDING
Jimmie Burke's wife had not been dead a month, when one morning Teressa brought the news that he was going to be married again.
"The haythen ould Mormon!" said Lull. "God help the wemen these days."
At first the children could not believe it. The late Mrs Burke had been a friend of theirs. They had walked to the village every Sunday afternoon, for the whole long year that she had been ill, with pudding and eggs for her. And they thought Jimmie was so fond of her. He was heartbroken when she died. When they went to the cottage the day before the funeral, with a wreath of ivy leaves to put on the coffin, they found him sitting beside the corpse, crying, and wiping his eyes on a bit of newspaper. Even Jane, who, for some reason that she had not given the others, had always hated Jimmie, told Lull when they came home that she could not help thinking a pity of the man sitting there crying like a child.
"It bates Banagher," said Teressa, sitting down by the fire with the cup of tea Lull had given her—"an' the woman not cowld in her coffin yet; sure, it's enough to make the dead walk."