The Irish Twins

by Lucy Fitch Perkins

Then the King jumps on to the platform of a passing street-car, and by and by, when it has gone several miles, he jumps off again, and walks up the street to a little house that’s as neat as neat can be.

It stands back from the street in a little green yard. The house is painted white, and the front door is green. But he doesn’t go to the front door. He goes round by the sidewalk to the kitchen door, and there he doesn’t even knock.

He opens the door and walks right in. Through the open door comes the smell of something good cooking, and he sees a plump woman with blue eyes that have smile wrinkles in the corners, just like his own, and crinkly dark hair, just like his own, too, bending over the stove. She is just tasting the something that smells so good, with a spoon.

When she sees the big man in the door she tastes so quickly that she burns her tongue! But she can use it just the same even if it is burned.

She runs to the big man and says, “And is that yourself, now, Larry darling? Sure, I’m that glad to see you, I’ve scalded myself with the soup!”

The big man has just time to say, “Sure, Eileen, you were always a great one for burning yourself. Do you remember that day at Grannie Malone’s”—when out into the kitchen tumble a little Larry and a little Eileen, and a Baby. They have heard his voice, and they fall upon the King of the Crossing as if he weren’t a King at all—but just a plain ordinary Uncle.

They take off his cap and rumple his hair. They get into his pockets and find some peppermints there. And the Baby even tries to get the silver star off his breast to put into her mouth.

“Look at that now,” cries Uncle Larry. “Get along with you! Is it trying to take me off the Force, you are? Sure, that star was never intended by the City for you to cut your teeth on.”

“She’ll poison herself with the things she’s always after putting in her mouth,” cries the Mother. She seizes the Baby and sets her in a safe corner by herself, gives her a spoon and says, “There now—you can be cutting your teeth on that.”

And when the children have quite worn Uncle Larry out, he sits upon the floor, where they have him by this time, and runs his fingers through his hair, which is standing straight up, and says to the Mother, “Sure, Eileen, when you and I were children on the old sod, we were never such spalpeens as the likes of these! They have me destroyed entirely, and me the biggest policeman on the Force! Is it American they are, or Irish, I want to know?”