Pat was rubbing his hands and chuckling to himself over this remark when his wife entered, hot and weary after her peregrinations over the ruins.
"Sixpence is all they're afther givin' me," she observed plaintively. "Dear knows, it's hard set we are to live these times at all."
"Is it sixpence, woman alive!" cried Pat; "I wonder they had the face to offer it to ye. Well, well, I was looking for a shillin' now, or maybe two. Here, cut the child a bit o' griddle cake; she's been keepin' me company this long while, haven't ye, Roseen? An' it's starvin' she is out-an'-out."
"Come here, alanna," said Mrs. Clancy, taking down the flat loaf from the shelf in the corner; "wait till I put a pinch o' sugar on it. I'm sorry I haven't butther for ye, but there isn't a bit in the house at all. There now."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Roseen, extending an eager hand.
"Ye're welcome, darlint. Here, Mike, ye'd like a bit too, wouldn't ye?"
"Aye," said Mike, drawing near likewise.
He was a sturdy little fellow of about eleven, with an open sunburnt face, hair bleached almost lint-white by the sun, and twinkling blue eyes like his father's. The mother passed her thin knotted hand lovingly over his tangled head and smilingly bade him "be off out o' that with Roseen."
The two little figures darted out in the sunlight, and soon were to be seen bounding like deer up the steep golden-green slope that led to the "Rock."
"What do ye think the little one there is afther sayin' to me?" asked Pat, shading his eyes with his hand as he peered after them. "'I wisht,' says she, 'a Gout 'ud get into me gran'father's fut,' says she; 'it 'ud sarve him right,' she says. I was afther tellin' her the 'Story of the Spider an' the Gout,' ye know."