Mr. Price set down this man’s name, and the ages of his children, desiring Mrs. M’Curdy to proceed to the next shanty.
“Next to Jemmy Brady, lives lame David, a poor drunken creature; he has an aged mother, two sisters, a wife and one child. He is a blacksmith, and could get good wages throughout the year if he would only keep sober. His son bids fair to be a decent honest man; but the child, now only fourteen, works beyonds his strength, and his poor mother was telling me the other day that he had dreadful night sweats, and is losing his appetite. I wish you could see this boy, sir, I am sure you would think he is overworked.”
“Don’t his employers take notice of it?”
“Why, yes, they tell him not to work so hard; but men have not time to attend to such things; if they were to notice the ailings of all their work people they could never get on—no, when poor people get sick they must go home and trust to their family for help. Patrick Conolly is an ill-favoured looking lad; he is red-haired, freckled and bandy-legged; yet for all that he is a very interesting child, at least to his mother, grandmother and aunts, to say nothing of myself. I wish the lad could be sent to school, he has been so decently brought up, that I am sure he would make a good school master to the poor Catholic children.”
“Well, Mrs. M’Curdy, your wish shall be gratified; Patrick Conolly shall be sent to a good school for one year; nay, don’t stop to thank me, it will cost me nothing. How do the women, his aunts and mother, maintain themselves?”
“They wash for the men at the forge and the quarry; and they pick blackberries in the season, and they go out to day’s work to clean house and so on, and the old woman patches and mends and knits. They are as industrious as possible, but they barely make out to keep life and body together; for money is scarce and women are plenty. If the man only was sober it would do very well, but he is so notorious a drunkard that he can get no work during the few days he is sober.”
“And thus the peace and well doing of a whole family are destroyed by the beastliness of one man. Who lives next to lame David?”
“Ah! then comes Larry M’Gilpin—there’s an honest creature spoiled, sir, by too much willingness to help others. He is always too late at the forge or the quarry, or the mill, for he is never steady at one place, because he has to help one neighbour look for his run-a-way pig, or to put up a fence, or to run for a doctor, or something or other. Every body calls upon Larry M’Gilpin, but no one does a thing for him. I never heard of any one doing him a good turn but yourself, sir, and it was but small service he did for you. I try to be of use to him as far as I can, and Norah teaches his little girl to read, which you know is something; but his wages, somehow or other, amounts to very little the year out. How they contrive to live I cannot tell; for they have five children, all living in one room, and on the bare ground too. To be sure, he has a chimney in it, and in winter they can keep themselves warm when they have wood to burn; but they do certainly live on less means than any family I know. I do not wonder she has the name of dirty Rachel; for how can a poor creature keep a husband and five children clean, when she has not money to buy soap even. But they are a quiet, well behaved set, and disturb no one. Larry keeps the children around him, and by his eternal good humour and pleasant ways he has contrived to make us all like him; so one throws him this thing and the other that; and your little bounties have come in a very good time. He only wishes, he says, that such gentlemen as you would sprain their ankle every day.”
“Is his wife lazy?—does she take in work, or go out to work?”
“I can’t say that she is lazy—only spiritless like. You know a woman with five children, the oldest only eight years old, cannot be expected to do much more than take care of them; and yet Rachel would be willing to make a coarse shirt now and then, if the price was not next to nothing. But next to Larry M’Gilpin, lives the woman of women! Here, just let me lift up this sash, sir, for one minute—now listen—do you hear any thing?”