“The top of the morning to you, Dennis Maguire,” Eileen called to the freckled boy when she saw him. “And does it take the two of you to watch one donkey at his breakfast? Come along and let’s play in the bog!”
“But however shall we leave Colleen? She might run away on us,” said Larry.
“She’s tethered by hunger fast enough,” said Eileen. “Ropes would not drag her away. But you could throw her halter over a stone, to be sure.”
Larry slipped the halter over a stone, they set the milk-jug in a safe place, and the three children ran off into the bog.
The bogland was brown and dark. Tufts of coarse grass grew here and there, and patches of yellow gorse. There were many puddles, and sometimes there were deep holes, where the turf had been cut out.
Mr McQueen was a thrifty man, and got his supply of turf early in the season. He would cut it out in long black blocks, like thick mud, and leave it in the sun to dry. When it was quite dry he would carry it home on Colleen’s back, pile it in a high turf-stack near the kitchen door, and it would burn in the fireplace all winter.
The children were barefooted, so they played in the puddles as much as ever they liked.
By and by Eileen said, “Let’s play we are Deirdre and the sons of Usnach.”
“And who were they, indeed?” said Dennis.