"An' you'd take in the very nixt waif that comes along," declared Mr. O'Hagan.
"Maybe," answered Mistress McVeigh, thoughtfully.
Mr. Conors broke in with the question, "Where's yer own boy, Corney? It's a long while since he was about the place with his capers and curly head. Only t'other day my missus was talkin' about the time he and my Johnny learned to smoke behind my barn, and almost burnt the hull of us into the bargain."
A smile flitted across Nancy McVeigh's face at the recollection. "My Corney's a wonderful lad, Mr. Conors. He doesn't take after either of his parents, fer he'd give over the best game in the world fer a book. He's livin' in Chicago, and he writes home now and then. He's makin' lots of money, too, the scamp, but he's like his father fer spendin'. Sometimes he borrows from me, just to tide him over, but he says that he will make enough money some day to turn the old tavern into a mansion. Then I'll be a foine lady, with nothin' to do but sit about and knit, with a lace cap on me head, and servants to do all the work. Though I'm afraid me old bones would never submit to that."
"Do ye believe the nonsense he writes, Mistress McVeigh?" questioned Mr. Conors.
"Aye, an' I do that, sir. It's me, his old mother, that knows the grit o' him, and the brains he has."
Tears were shining in Nancy's eyes, and she dried them on her apron, under cover of a sharp order which she called to a maid in the dining-room.
"Ye have a rare good heart in ye, Nancy McVeigh," Mr. O'Hagan commented.
"Heart, ye call it, sor. It's a mother's heart, and nothin' else," she answered, quickly, and then continued, somewhat bitterly, "It's nigh broke with anger and trouble this day. It's not that the work is hard, nor the trade fallin' away, for it has kept me and mine these many years, and it'll never fail while I have me health. But my interest falls due this month."
"It's a power o' interest ye hev paid that old miser, John Keene, since McVeigh took over the tavern," Mr. Conors observed.