“I don’t know, but he was one that said I looked like an honest chap, and he’d trust me to run and give you the watch. He is dressed in a blue coat. He went toward the quay. That’s all I know.”
On opening the paper of trinkets I found a card with these words: “Barny—with kind thanks.”
Barny! Poor Barny! The Irishman whose passage I paid coming to America three years ago. Is it possible?
I ran after him the way which the child directed, and was so fortunate as just to catch a glimpse of the skirt of his coat, as he went into a neat, good-looking house. I walked up and down some time, expecting him to come out again; for I could not suppose that it belonged to Barny. I asked a grocer, who was leaning over his hatch door, if he knew who lived in the next house?
“An Irish gentleman, of the name of O’Grady.”
“And his Christian name?”
“Here it is in my books, sir—Barnaby O’Grady.”
I knocked at Mr. O’Grady’s door, and made my way into the parlour; where I found him, his two sons and his wife, sitting very sociably at tea. He and the two young men rose immediately to set me a chair.
“You are welcome, kindly welcome, sir,” said he. “This is an honour I never expected any way. Be pleased to take the seat near the fire. ‘Twould be hard indeed if you would {Footnote: Should.} not have the best seat that’s to be had in this house, where we none of us never should have sat, nor had seats to sit upon, but for you.”
The sons pulled off my shabby great coat, and took away my hat, and the wife made up the fire. There was something in their manner altogether which touched me so much, that it was with difficulty I could keep myself from bursting into tears. They saw this, and Barny, (for I shall never call him any thing else,) as he thought that I should like better to hear of public affairs than to speak of my own, began to ask his sons if they had seen the day’s papers, and what news there were?