“Who would never see it?”
“It’s her husband she manes,” said the sympathetic emigrant at my side. “He sint fur her from Michigan. The wee choild was born after he left, and she wants to bring him his baby dead or alive, poor craythur.”
“When did it die?”
“This soide of Kingston, sor. Shure the railway min don’t know it yit, and there she has been houldin’ that dead baby in her arrums ever since.”
“I want t’ let him see it, sir; I want t’ let Miles see his baby,” and bending over the little dead body the hot tears fell on the somber shawl.
In a far corner with their arms about one another, and with her head lying on his breast, sat a young married couple who were going west to seek their fortune. What a strange bridal trip! She was in a troubled slumber, but he was painfully awake. Finally she awoke and looked about her with an expression of alarm on her tired face, but when her eyes met his a swift smile of gladness chased all fear away, and she nestled her face on his shoulder again, and clasped her arms about his neck.
“Jim,” she said, softly, “I was dreaming of home—I thought I saw the old bridge, and the chapel on the hill where we were married, and I thought I saw mother comin’ down past the boreen, and she was callin’ to me, ‘Katie, Katie, where are you, asthore?’ and it wakened me.”
The girl sat erect, looking straight in her husband’s eyes. “Jimmy,” she cried, “take me home again.” A look of pain swept over his face. She saw it, and with a woman’s swift repentance she flung herself upon his breast and was silent.
A look of utter weariness bordering on misery sat on one and all.
“Well, this is the divil’s own counthry, to be sure,” said a very surprised and somewhat frightened-looking immigrant to me.