In a cottage of three rooms, apart from the tenements, yet little better than they, another John is sitting. John O’Rourke this, an Irishman, come eighteen years since from the old country; and with him sits his only daughter,
who will be eighteen in February. Bridget O’Rourke has no need to fear the verdict if she is compared with the heiress of Errickdale; she is full as tall and stately, and her dark, severe beauty would be noticeable anywhere. But there is no sparkle in her eyes, that are heavy with unshed tears, and no smile is on her lips.
These people are not poor, as Errickdale counts poverty. It is much, very much, to have a house to yourself, even though it be of three rooms only, and floor and walls are bare. It is much to wear whole clothes, though the dress is cotton print and the coat is fustian. It is much to have plenty of bread and cheese and a bit of cold meat on your table, and to have a decent table to sit at. Errickdale counts these things luxuries. John O’Rourke is a sort of factotum for the agent, and, next to him, has higher wages than any other man on the place; but, for all that, his brow is lowering to-night, and as he sits in moody silence his fingers work and his hands are clenched, as though he were longing for a fight with some one.
“You’re not eating, Bridget, my girl,” he said at last, draining the last drop of his cup of tea. “You’re not as hungry as I.”
She pushed her plate away. “I can’t eat, father,” she said. “Down in the hollow Smith’s wife and babes are crying with hunger, and over at Rutherford’s the girls haven’t a shoe to their feet in this bitter weather.”
“And so you must go hungry too, girl?” he asked.
“I can’t eat,” she said again. “It chokes me. Why should I have good things, and they go starving? I wish I was starving with them!”
“Tut, tut, girl! What help would
that be? And what’s Smith, anyhow, and Smith’s boys, but Orangemen, that hoot at ye Sundays, and laugh at your going ten miles, all, as they say, to worship images?”
Bridget smiled faintly. This righteous John O’Rourke was no very fervent Catholic in his deeds, whatever his words might go to prove. It was seldom that he found himself able to foot those good ten miles with her, though she did it regularly, in spite of ridicule and difficulty.