“I see, my friends,” said Mr. Price, “that it is difficult to tell which has made the most. I shall not give the premium to any one in particular. You have all done well. David Conolly is, certainly, most to be praised, because he has broken himself of an accursed vice.”—“I’ll never drink a drop, your honour, from this hour,” said David—“The boys,” continued Mr. Price—“but I dare not trust myself to speak of them—the gentlemen present will take care that they shall always have the best wages and the best places in their gift; they deserve it well; and, as I thought they would behave exactly as they have done, I have brought them each something suited to their present wants. As to you, Bonny Betty—seeing that you are a woman, by rights I ought to distinguish you beyond the others. You shall have your shanty and lot rent free; the rest shall pay into the hands of Daniel M’Leary ten dollars each, for the next year. I shall charge them nothing now. The gardens will be better, as the raspberries and strawberries will be ready for sale; and the year after, the asparagus will be large enough to cut. I shall then build a small market-house, and place Mr. M’Leary at the head of it. Make way there, Larry, and let the packages from the wagon be brought in.”
Mr. Price gave every one a parcel, containing a number of things necessary to the coming winter; such as blankets, coarse cloth for the children, stockings, and stuff for cloaks and coats—besides sewing cotton, pins, tape, needles, scissors; and for the boys plenty of paper, pencils, books and carpenter’s tools—the men could hardly stagger home under their pleasant loads; and the women went trotting along by their side, laughing and talking loud in the joy of their hearts. Mr. Price did not stay for their thanks, which, after the Irish fashion, they were pouring out feelingly and rapidly. All he heard, as he jumped in the dearborn, with the gentleman who owned the land, was the end of Jemmy Brady’s outpouring—“God bless him; if his son had lived, he’d, may be, in time have been as good a man as himself.” Mr. Price was very much affected; stopped with the intention of speaking to the man, but feeling unable, he rode away.
“Norah, dear,” said he, in the evening of this busy day,—“Norah, you have done being afraid of me, have you not? You may remember how unwilling you were to come near me when I first saw you.”
“Yes,” said the little girl, “I was afraid of you then, but it was not long. It was only something that Jemmy Brady said to me in the kitchen that made me not like you at first; but I love you dearly now,” said she, as she jumped on his lap and threw her arms around his neck.
“I wanted you then to tell me what Jemmy said to make you fear me, but you would not. You will tell me now, will you not?” and he pressed the little creature fondly to his bosom.
“Why, Jemmy said you were the image of my father; and that if he chose, he could make my dear grandmother very unhappy; but that he would not tell—he liked me too well to let any one separate me from him. So I was afraid, and yet I did not know why you would take me from my dear grandmother; for that was what I thought Jemmy meant.”
Mr. Price sent her to call Jemmy. When questioned, he said he firmly believed that Mr. Price’s son was Norah’s father; that he lived in the neighbourhood, very near to Sally M’Curdy; that the young man, who called himself White, fell in love with Ellinora M’Curdy, who was a beautiful girl, but too virtuous to listen to any one excepting in the way of marriage—that he finally did marry her, but under the name of White. After a few months, he came to America, where he married again, and this was the last they ever heard of him. Jemmy Brady went on to observe that he came to this country about a year after Mrs. M’Curdy, and heard from them that Mr. White had married again, and that they had made up their minds never to molest him, fearing that the little girl would be taken from them. He had seen the likeness between Mr. Price and the young man who called himself White, and he said aloud—but not in the hearing of Mrs. M’Curdy—that the likeness was very strong; but he did not think, at the time, the little girl minded it.
On further inquiry, and on recollecting what his son had said in his last moments, owning that he had left a wife, and, he believed, a child, in Ireland, Mr. Price had no doubt that little Norah was his grandchild. A book, with a few lines in the title page, which Mrs. M’Curdy had preserved, recognized as his own, given to his son before he sailed, more fully proved it; but he could hardly be said to love the child more after this disclosure. He immediately acknowledged her; and glad was he that his unhappy son had left no children by this second marriage. Of course, Mrs. M’Curdy returned no more to the shanty. She lived with Mr. Price, and had but one regret—that her poor daughter had not lived to share their happiness. Both she and Norah went yearly to visit the grave under the old hemlock tree.
Here was an unlooked-for reward for his kindness to a hapless family; but as every man who does good is not to expect a grandchild to start up in his walk, he must look to other sources for compensation. Mr. Price had these likewise; for the shanty people never relapsed into idleness and dirt; but continued to improve in their circumstances. At the end of ten years, (and they passed quickly away,) every man was able to buy the lot of ground on which he had so long wrought. The owner sold them at a moderate price; but he more than made up for this small advance by the greater prices obtained for the rest of the land which he owned in the neighbourhood.
In consequence of the success of this scheme other landholders adopted the same wise policy, and the benefit to their property was immense. The love of horticulture opened the way to better habits and tastes among the poor of the district; and there was none so humble that had not a garden spot of their own. The ladies’ societies fled from them for ever; and the poor women blessed the day of their departure, for now they could earn an honest living by their needle.