She went to the fireplace and hung the kettle on the hook, blew the coals to a blaze with a pair of leaky bellows, and sat down before the fire once more to wait for the water to boil.
She knit round and round her stocking, and there was no sound in the room but the click-click of her needles, and the tick-tick of the clock, and the little purring noise of the fire on the hearth.
Just as the kettle began to sing, there was a squawking among the hens on the doorstep, and two dark heads appeared above the closed half of the door.
A little girl’s voice called out, “How are you at all, Grannie Malone?”
And a little boy’s voice said, “We’ve come to bring you a sup of milk that Mother sent you.”
Grannie Malone jumped out of her chair
and ran to the door. “Och, if it’s not the McQueen Twins—the two of them!” she cried. “Bless your sweet faces! Come in, Larry and Eileen! You are as welcome as the flowers of spring. And how is your Mother, the day? May God spare her to her comforts for long years to come!” She swung the door open as she talked, took the jug from Eileen’s hand, and poured the milk into a jug of her own that stood on the dresser.
“Sure, Mother is well. And how is yourself, Grannie Malone?” Eileen answered, politely.
“Barring the rheumatism and the asthma, and the old age in my bones, I’m doing well, thanks be to God,” said Grannie Malone. “Sit down by the fire, now, till I wet a cup of tea and make a cakeen for you! And indeed it’s yourselves can read me a letter from my son Michael, that’s in America! It has been in the house these three days waiting for some one with the learning to come along by.”