Cornelius, her son, had written her often and voluminously since her trip southwards. He had also made a definite promise that he would come home the very next summer. 'Twas this that brightened her eyes and put a lightness into her step. It also provided a subject of constant conversation between herself and Katie Duncan. Together they would count out the months and weeks and days to the time when he should arrive.
"The lad's worried, so he is, an' he wants to see his ould mother, in spoite o' his foine clothes an' his dealin's," she repeated, during those happy confidences.
Although Nancy had abandoned the public service, yet hers was no humdrum existence. She still had duties to perform which occupied her thoughts from daylight to dusk. She frequently visited the Dodonas, who lived in the big Piper house. And the Piper children played about her front door, much as her own son and Johnny Keene had done so many years before. Other children, too, found the vicinity of the widow McVeigh's a very tempting resort, and their parents were well satisfied, for they had learned to love and respect the white-haired woman who chose to be their guardian.
"I'll niver get enough o' the dears," she would say to the mothers, and they quite believed her.
In the winter of the following year Will Devitt came home from the North-West. He had been absent three years, and during that time had secured a grant of land. He boasted of his possessions to his foster-mother, and she was almost as proud of them as he was himself.
"It's a grand country, sure, this Canada of ours, an' were I younger I'd go back wi' ye, Will. D'ye think we could find business fer a tavern?" she asked him one day.
"You would just make your fortune," Will responded, enthusiastically.
Nancy smiled and shook her head.
"I'm only talkin' like a silly ould woman, laddie. In the first place, I'm no fit to run a tavern, an' in the second, it's no fittin' occupation fer the loikes o' me."
Will had been home a short while when Nancy's suspicions were aroused, and being unable to lay them bare to Katie Duncan, she told them to Mrs. Doctor Dodona.