"Thank God, none o' me childre' is red-headed on me; they're no more to be let an' held than a flick o' fire," said Aunt Mary Ann. "Who 'd ever take the notion to be setting up business out there on the Birchy Plains?"
"Ryan's folks 'll look after her, sure, the same as ourselves," insisted Uncle Patsy hopefully, as he lighted his pipe again. It was like a summer night; the kitchen windows were all open, the month of May was nearly at an end, and there was a sober croaking of frogs in the low fields that lay beyond the village.
III.
"Where's Nora?" Young Johnny O'Callahan was asking the question; the express had stopped for water, and he seemed to be the only passenger; this was his day off.
Mrs. Ryan was sitting on her doorstep to rest in the early evening; her husband had been promoted from switch-tender to boss of the great water-tank which was just beginning to be used, and there was talk of further improvements and promotions at Birch Plains; but the good-natured wife sensibly declared that the better off a woman was, the harder she always had to work.
She took a long look at Johnny, who was dressed even more carefully than if it were a pleasant Sunday.
"This don't be your train, annyway," she answered, in a meditative tone. "How come you here now all so fine, I 'd like to know, riding in the cars like a lord; ain't you brakeman yet on old twinty-four?"
"'Deed I am, Mrs. Ryan; you would n't be afther grudging a boy his day off? Where's Nora?"
"She's gone up the road a bitteen," said Mrs. Ryan, as if she suddenly turned to practical affairs. "She 's worked hard the day, poor shild! and she took the cool of the evening, and the last bun she had left, and wint away with herself. I kep' the taypot on the stove for her, but she 'd have none at all, at all!"
The young man turned away, and Mrs. Ryan looked after him with an indulgent smile. "He's a pritty b'y," she said. "I 'd like well if he 'd give a look at one o' me own gerrls; Julia, now, would look well walking with him, she 's so dark. He's got money saved. I saw the first day he come after the cakeens 't was the one that baked them was in his mind. She's lucky, is Nora; well, I'm glad of it."