Part way up the rocky path he stopped to look toward the top. He saw Mr. Sharp-horn looking down at him, and Lightfoot pretended to be looking for some grass that grew in the cracks of the rocks. As he did this the widow came to the door of her shanty.
“Mike! Mike!” she called. “Where are you? Sure an’ I want you to be takin’ home Mrs. Mackinson’s wash. ’Tis all finished I have it.” And then, as she shaded her eyes from the sun, and looked up at the rocks, Mrs. Malony saw Lightfoot half way to the top.
“Would you look at that goat now!” she called. “Come here, Mike me boy, and see where Lightfoot is. Sure an’ it’s the illigint climber he’s gettin’ to be altogether!”
“Yes, Lightfoot’s a good goat,” said Mike as he came around the corner of the shanty where he had been trying to fix a broken wheel on a small cart he had made from a soap box. “He’s a fine leaper and he’s going to be better when he grows up. I wonder what he’s trying to do now?”
“Sure, go to the top of the rocks, isn’t it?” asked Mrs. Malony.
“If he does the Sharp-horns or old Bumper will send him down quick enough!” laughed Mike. “They don’t want the small Nannies and Billies eatin’ the top grass. You’d better come back, Lightfoot! he called to the climbing goat. But if Lightfoot heard and understood he gave no sign.
“I’d like to stay and see what happens when he gets to the top,” laughed Mike, running his fingers through his red hair.
“Ye’ve no time,” called his mother. “Be off wid this wash now, like a good boy. Sure it’s the money from it I’ll be needin’ to get meat for the Sunday dinner. Off wid ye now!”
“All right, Mother. Just as soon as I fix the wheel on me cart.”
The Widow Malony did not use the kind of language you, perhaps, talk. She made what we would call “mistakes.” Mike had been to school, and he could speak more correctly, but he, too, sometimes made mistakes in his talk. However that did not so much matter. He intended to work hard so he could get money to study, and his mother tried to help.