How long Helen slept she did not know; but when she awoke the candle had burned out and the chamber was pitch dark. “Oh! what is the matter? What did I hear? Was it only a dream?” she cried, starting to her feet.
“Come, now, I want my supper!” growled Mike, staggering further into the room. “Where’s my supper?”
Pen cannot describe the wife’s feelings as she groped about for the match-box. And when finally, after letting three or four matches drop out of her quivering fingers, she succeeded in lighting a fresh candle, what a sight did she behold! Was this man scowling at her, with one eye battered and swollen, her own Michael?
“I say, where’s my supper?” he repeated with an oath.
Without uttering a word, but with a sinking of the heart which she had never experienced till now, Helen made haste to kindle a fire and heat up the potatoes and pork which she had laid aside for him
in the evening. While thus employed Roony dropped down on a bench; then, after grumbling at her a few minutes, began suddenly to giggle. “I want you to know,” said he, “that I’m now a member of the Black-eye Club. But that’s plain enough by looking at me, eh? And when I’ve eaten supper, I’m going to make you cut my hair—cut it short to fighting trim.”
“O husband!” replied Helen, in a voice of sorrowful entreaty, “do not break my heart, I love you so.”
“Break your heart! Ha! ha! that’s a good joke.” Then, glancing up at the clock: “Well, by jingo, Nell, I’d better call this meal breakfast. Why, it’s pretty nigh four, isn’t it?”
Encouraged, perhaps, by the somewhat milder tone in which these last words were spoken, she now approached him, and, bending down, proceeded to examine his wounded eye. “Yes, bathe it for me,” he continued. “But, for all it hurts, I’m deuced proud of it; for it’s the christening mark of the Black-eye Club.”
“Oh! hush, dear. Don’t mention that wicked gang any more,” said the wife. “I hate them; they are fiends.”