"The Lord love ye, darlin, for remimberin us when ivery one, barrin' the doctor, and the praste, turns the cowld shouldther in our throuble!"
"Now if you really want to help, just keep this child quiet while I see to the sickest ones," said Belle, dumping a stout infant on to his knee, thrusting an orange into his hand, and leaving him aghast while she unpacked her little messes, and comforted the maternal bird.
With the calmness of desperation, her aid-de-camp put down his best beaver on the rich soil which covered the floor, pocketed his gloves, and, making a bib of his cambric handkerchief, gagged young Pat deliciously with bits of orange whenever he opened his mouth to roar. At her first leisure moment, Belle glanced at him to see how he was getting on, and found him so solemnly absorbed in his task that she went off into a burst of such infectious merriment that the O'Briens, sick and well, joined in it to a man.
"Good fun, isn't it?" she asked, turning down her cuffs when the last spoonful of gruel was administered.
"I've no doubt of it, when one is used to the thing. It comes a little hard at first, you know," returned Lennox, wiping his forehead, with a long breath, and seizing his hat as if quite ready to tear himself away.
"You've done very well for a beginner; so kiss the baby and come home," said Belle approvingly.
"No, thank you," muttered Lennox, trying to detach the bedaubed innocent. But little Pat had a grateful heart, and, falling upon his new nurse's neck with a rapturous crow, clung there like a burr.
"Take him off! Let me out of this! He's one too many for me!" cried the wretched young man in comic despair.
Being freed with much laughter, he turned and fled, followed by a shower of blessings from Mrs. O'Brien.
As they came up again into the pleasant highways, Lennox said, awkwardly for him,—