“Musha, your reverence, an’ what am I to do on Lunnon Bridge?”
Again he rose to approach the figure; again it eluded him. Again a change occurred in the quality of the interest with which he regarded the admonition of his visitor. Again he passed a day of doubt as to the propriety of undertaking what seemed to him little less than a journey to the world’s end, without a penny in his pocket, and upon the eve of his wife’s accouchement, merely in obedience to a recommendation which, according to his creed, was not yet sufficiently strongly given, even were it under any circumstances to be adopted. For Shamus had often heard, and firmly believed, that a dream or a vision instructing one how to procure riches ought to be experienced three times before it became entitled to attention.
He lay down, however, half hoping that his vision might thus recommend itself to his notice It did so.
“Shamus Dempsey,” said the figure, looking more angry than ever, “you have not yet gone to London Bridge, although I hear your wife dying out to bid you go. And, remember, this s my third warning.”
“Why, then, tundher an’ ouns, your reverence, just stop and tell me-“
Ere he could utter another word the holy visitant disappeared, in a real passion at Shamus’s qualified curse; and at the same moment his confused senses recognised the voice of his wife, sending up from her straw pallet the cries that betoken a mother’s distant travail. Exchaning a few words with her, he hurried away. professedly call up, at her cabin window, an old crane who sometimes attended the very poorest women in Nance Dempsey’s situation.
“Hurry to her, Noreen, acuishla, and do the best it’s the will of God to let you do. And tell her from me, Noreen—” He stopped, drawing in his lip, and clutching his cudgel hard.
“Shamus, what ails you, avick?” asked old Noreen; “what ails you, to make the tears run down in the gray o’ the morning?”
“Tell her from me,” continued Shamus, “that it’s from the bottom o’ the heart I’ll pray, morning and evening, and fresh and fasting, maybe, to give her a good time of it; and to show her a face on the poor child that’s coming, likelier than the two that God sent afore it. And that I’ll be thinking o’ picturing it to my own mind, though I’ll never see it far away.”
“Musha, Shamus, what are you speaking of?”