“You're a very conceited colleen; there's no girl that can't be spared from home sometimes,” said Mrs. Murphy. “I thought you would help Biddy and me to pick black currants. There are quarts and quarts of 'em in the garden, and the maids can't do it by themselves, poor things. Well, Biddy, you have got to help me today.”
“Oh, mammy, I just can't,” answered Biddy. “I'm due down at the shore, and I want to go a bit of the way back with Nora. You can't expect me to help you today, mammy.”
“There she is, Nora—there she is!” exclaimed the good lady, her face growing red and her eyes flashing fire; “not a bit of good, not worth her keep, I tell her. Why shouldn't she stay at home and help her mother? Do you hear me, Squire Murphy? Give your orders to the girl; tell her to stay at home and help her mother.”
“Ah, don't be bothering me,” said Squire Murphy. “It's out I'm going now. I have enough on my own shoulders without attending to the tittle-tattle of women.”
He rose from the table, and the next moment had left the room.
“Dear, dear! there are bad times ahead for poor Old Ireland,” said Mrs. Murphy. “Children don't obey their parents; husbands don't respect their wives; it's a queer state of the country. When I was young, and lived at my own home in Tipperary, we had full and plenty. There was a bite and a sup for every stranger who came to the door, and no one talked of money, nor thought of it neither. The land yielded a good crop, and the potatoes—oh, dear! oh, dear! that was before the famine. The famine brought us a lot of bad luck, that it did.”
“But the potatoes have been much better the last few years, and this year they say we're going to have a splendid crop,” said Nora. “But I must go now, Mrs. Murphy. Thank you so much for asking me.”
“You're looking a bit pale; but you're a beautiful girl,” said the good woman admiringly. “I'd give a lot if Biddy could change places with you—that is, in appearance, I mean. She's not a credit to anybody, with her bumpy forehead and her cocked nose, and her rude ways to her mother.”
“Mammy, I really cannot help the way I am made,” said Biddy; “and as to staying in this lovely day picking black currants and making jam, and staining my fingers, it's not to be thought of. Come along out, Nora. If you must be off back to O'Shanaghgan, I mean to claim the last few moments of your stay here.”
The girls spent the morning together, and early in the afternoon Nora returned to O'Shanaghgan. Terence met her as she was driving down the avenue.