“Your honour’s kindly welcome,” said the old man, making an attempt to rise.
“Pray, don’t let me disturb you.”
“It was only a letter from a boy of mine that’s over the seas, we was reading,” said the old man. “A better boy to an ould father, that’s good for nothing now in this world, never was, plase your honour. See what he has sent me: a draft here for ten guineas out of the little pay he has. God for ever bless him!—as he surely will.”
After a few minutes’ conversation, the old man’s heart was so much opened towards me, that he talked as freely as if he had known me for years. I led to the subject of his other son Michael, who was mentioned in the letter as a wild chap. “Ah! your honour, that’s what lies heaviest on my heart, and will, to my dying day, that Mick, before he died, which they say he did surely a twelvemonth ago, over there in England, never so much as sent me one line, good or bad, or his sister a token to remember him by even!”
“Had he but sent us the least bit of a word, or the least token in life, I had been content,” said the sister, wiping her eyes: “we don’t so much as know how he died.”
I took this moment to relate the circumstances of Michael Noonan’s death; and when I told them of his dying request about the half-guinea and the silk handkerchief, they were all so much touched, that they utterly forgot the ten-guinea draft, which I saw on the ground, in the dirt, under the old man’s feet, whilst he contemplated the half-guinea which his poor Michael had sent him: repeating, “Poor fellow! poor fellow! ‘twas all he had in the world. God bless him!—Poor Michael! he was a wild chap! but none better to his parents than he while the life was in him. Poor Michael!”
In no country have I found such strong instances of filial affection as in Ireland. Let the sons go where they may, let what will befall them, they never forget their parents at home: they write to them constantly the most affectionate letters, and send them a share of whatever they earn.
When I asked the daughter of this Noonan, why she had not married? the old man answered, “That’s her own fault—if it be a fault to abide by an old father. She wastes her youth here, in the way your honour sees, tending him who has none other to mind him.”
“Oh! let alone that,” said the girl, with a cheerful smile; “we be too poor to think of marrying yet, by a great deal! so, father dear, you’re no hinderance any way. For don’t I know, and doesn’t Jemmy there know, that it’s a sin and a shame, as my mother used to say, for them that have nothing, to marry and set up house-keeping, like the rogue that ruined my father?”
“That’s true,” said the young man, with a heavy sigh; “but times will mend, or we’ll strive and mend them, with the blessing of God.”