[CHAPTER SECOND.]
SEEDS BY THE WAYSIDE.
THE next morning when Phil waked, he heard what seemed to be a lively discussion going on down in the kitchen, which was also the parlor and dining-room.
"Shure, the child's got learning enough for the likes of him already!" he heard his mother say. "Wasn't yourself saying yesterday he could read like a priest?"
"But he can't write, Mary—not to speak of. I'd like him to have a real good education, and you know, dear, it costs nothing with the free schools they have."
"Oh, well! Just as you like, granny dear," said easy-going Mary. "He's your own boy, and you can bring him up to suit yourself. It's a good boy he is, anyhow. But I must be start-in' out, or I'll be late at Mrs. Maberly's."
Phil hurried down stairs, but his mother had already gone. She took her breakfast where she washed, but she had got ready some tea, milk, and potatoes for her mother-in-law and Phil, whom she loved, as she would have said, "with all the veins of her heart."
With all the dirt and carelessness and waste of the household, there was more real love and comfort within its walls than in many a fine house kept in the best manner. But then, Mary might have been just as good-natured without leaving the potato parings in a heap on the floor by the stove, and her Sunday gown in another heap on a chair for the cat and kittens to make a bed of, spoiling it more than a year's careful wear and putting away would have done.
Phil, however, was used to his mother's heaps, and did not mind them. Granny did mind, but she could not help herself, and did not let her daughter-in-law's ways make her unhappy for more than a few minutes at a time. Phil hung up the gown, picked up the potato skins and gave them to the cow, and then sat down to breakfast. Looking at his grandmother as he gave her her cup of tea, he saw that she had been crying.
"Has anything happened, granny?" he asked.