She drew her own chair up to the table; the Twins sat on the bench on the other side. Grannie Malone crossed herself, and then they each took a potato, and broke it open. They put salt on it, poured a little milk into the skin which they held like a cup, and it was ready to eat.
Grannie poured the tea, and they had milk and sugar in it. The little cakeen was broken open and buttered, and, “Musha, ’tis fit for the Queen herself,” said Larry, when he had taken his first bite.
And Eileen said, “Indeed, ma’am, it’s a grand cook you are entirely.”
“Sure, I’d need to be a grand cook with the grand company I have,” Grannie answered politely, “and with the fine son I have in America to be sending me a fortune in every letter! ’Tis a great thing to have a good son, and do you be that same to your Mother, the both of you, for ’tis but one Mother that you’ll get in all the world, and you’ve a right to be choice of her.”
“Sure, I’ll never at all be a good son to my Mother,” laughed Eileen.
“Well, then,” said Grannie, “you can be a good daughter to her, and that’s not far behind. Whist now, till I tell you the story of the Little Cakeen, and you’ll see
that ’tis a good thing entirely to behave yourselves and grow up fine and respectable, like the lad in the tale. It goes like this now:—”
“It was once long ago in old Ireland, there was living a fine, clean, honest, poor widow woman, and she having two sons (Note 1), and she fetched the both of them up fine and careful, but one of them turned out bad entirely. And one day she says to him, says she:—
“‘I’ve given you your living as long as ever I can, and it’s you must go out into the wide world and seek your fortune.’