Cleg Kelly's mother lay still in her resting grave, and had no more need of pity. Cleg abode with his father in the tumble-down shanty by the brickfield at Easter Beach, and asked for no pity either. Cleg had promised his mother, Isbel, that he would not forsake his father.
"Na, I'll no rin awa' frae ye," so he told his father, frankly, "for I promised my mither; but gin ye lick me, I'll pit my wee knife intil ye when ye are sleepin'! Mind ye that!"
And his father minded, which was fortunate for both.
Cleg was now twelve, and much respected by his father, who fully believed that he was speaking the truth. Tim Kelly, snow-shoveller, feared his son Cleg with his sudden wild-cat fierceness, much more than he feared God—more, even, than he feared Father Donnelly, to whom he went twice a year to ease his soul of a portion of his more specially heinous sins.
Yet Tim Kelly was a better man, because of the respect in which he held his son. He even boasted of Cleg's cleverness when he was safe among his old cronies in Mother Flannigan's kitchen, or in the bar-parlour at Hare's public.
"Shure, there's not the like av him in this kingdom av ignorant blockheads. My Clig's the natest and the illigantest gossoon that stips in his own boot-leather. Shure, he can lick anything at all near his own weight. Sorra's in him, he can make his ould man stand about. Faith, 'tis him that's goin' to be the great man intoirely, is our little Clig."
These were the opinions of his proud father.
But Jim Carnochan, better known as the "Devil's Lickpot," demurred. If Cleg was so clever a boy, why was he not set to work? A boy so smart ought long ere this to have been learning the profession. To this Mother Flannigan agreed, for she shared in the profits.
"My Peether, rest his sowl for a good lad—him as was hanged be token of false evidence—and the bobbies findin' the gintleman's goold watch in Peether's pocket, was at wurrk whin he was six years av his age. Take my wurrd for it, Timothy Kelly, there never yet was a thruely great man that didn't begin his education young."
"Maybe," said Tim, "and that's the raison, Misthress Flannigan, that so few av them grew up to be ould men."