“I am nigh finished with the foot, mother.”
“My own two eyes are getting dim, and I cannot hurry like you these days,” said the woman in the bed. “Run those hens from the house, and the young sturk too.... I wonder what he is coming in here for now, the rascal?”
“Maybe he likes to be near the fire,” said the child, looking at the spotted calf that was nosing at a dish on the dresser. “When Micky’s Jim built a new byre it was not easy to keep the cattle in it, for they always wanted to get back into the warm house again.”
With these words she rose and chased the young animal out of doors, while a few stray hens fluttered wildly about in making their exit. “The cows like the blaze,” Norah went on as she came back and took up her seat by the fire. “Every evening they turn round and look at it, and you can see their big soft eyes shining through the darkness.”
“It is the strange things that you be noticing, alannah, but what you say is very true,” said the mother. “It will be a letter from Fergus, I suppose, with five gold guineas in it,” she went on. “Maybe he will be at the back of America by now.... If he sends five gold guineas we will make a holy nun of you, Norah, and then you can pray day and night with no one at all to ask you to do anything but that alone.”
“I might get tired of it, mother.”
“Son of Mary, listen to her! Tired of saying your prayers, you mean? There is that sturk at the door again. Isn’t he the rascal of the world?”
II
DARKNESS had fallen before James Ryan returned from Frosses post-office, which was over four miles away. He entered the cabin, breathing heavily, the sweat streaming from his brow and coursing down his blood-threaded cheeks. He had run most of the way back, and in his hand he carried the letter, the first which he had received for two whole years.
“Mercy be on us, but you are out of breath!” said his wife, laying down her knitting irons, a fault of which she was seldom guilty, save when eating or sleeping. “Put one of the rushlights in the fire, Norah, and read the letter from foreign parts. Is it from the boy himself?”