PATRICK O’BRIEN.
A TALE OF HUMBLE LIFE.
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BY H. HASTINGS WELD.
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The father of Ellen O’Brien was a small farmer, whose situation when the child began to think at all, seemed to her the realization of all that is happy, and all that is cheerful in this world. Children do think very early; much earlier than their elders suspect. But happily for them they are easily contented. They look at the bright side, and unconscious of the superior advantages, and the greater comforts of others, have no temptation to discontented comparisons, and no motive for uneasy envy.
Ellen’s earliest memory of marked and positive happiness—that is to say, of an incident which conferred particular pleasure, was connected with a child—a very small child. She remembered how her father told her to “make a lap, now,” and placed the wee thing upon the knees which she prepared with much ado to receive it. She was told that this was her little brother, her own little brother; and she hugged it in troubled happiness, almost afraid to touch, lest she should hurt it. She gazed upon it with that undefined feeling of mingled awe and pleasure with which little children regard less children. She looked at its fragile hands and wondered, if she took them in hers, whether they would fade or drop to pieces, like the delicate blossoms which she had often killed with kindness. And when it cried—oh, but she was astonished! That such a little thing should be so ungrateful while she coddled and cared for it, and nursed it ever so tenderly, was more than she could well endure. She thought it well deserved, and ought to have a whipping, only that a whipping might hurt it—and that she would not consent to.
It was, however, not a great while before a safe acquaintance grew up between the new comer and Ellen. He was called Patrick, after his father, and his father’s father before him. Ellen was three years his senior. That difference in their ages would have been a wonder; only that it was explainable. Another little Patrick, his predecessor, was “called home,” as his father said, “before he had scarce a taste of the world at all.” And Ellen, from hearing so often of the other little Patrick, and from her indistinct memory of a baby that she saw one day, as if in a dream, and did not see any more, learned to think of infants as of little things that would die if they were not carefully watched. And this Patrick she was resolved should not slip away for want of attention from his sister; therefore she nursed him as carefully as if that had been her sole vocation.
The wonder about babies grew less as Ellen grew older. At first, in her childish little heart, she thought every little baby must be a little Patrick, and that no new one could come while there was another about. But familiarity destroys marvels. She found there could be little Phelims and Terrences as well as Patricks, Bridgets and Kathleens as well as Ellens. Child after child lifted its clamorous voice for food and nursing in Patrick O’Brien’s cottage, until at last when he was asked respecting his children, he was fain to count them upon his fingers. And he always began with Ellen and his thumb—Paddy came next, and the formula was—“There’s Ellen, then little Paddy that was called early, then Paddy that is now—sure Ellen and Paddy are the thumb and forefinger to us. What would the mother do without them, at all?”
Ellen grew to a fine, stout girl, with a cheerful open face when you spoke to her—but there was a shade of care and thought over it when in repose, which you may often see in the oldest daughter of a poor man. She moved and acted as if while the tribe who had exhausted the family names of the O’Briens were born children to her mother, she was born before them for a deputy mother to them all. Legs and arms were all over the cottage, in all sorts of places where they shouldn’t be, and she jerked them out of harm’s way, with a half-petulant dexterity which was pleasant to observe. Tow-heads and shock-heads popped up continually, and she pushed them aside with a “there now, wont you be aisy!” which was musical, with a very little discord. And there was an easy and natural carelessness of authority and half rebellion in obedience, which was truly puzzling to strangers, but which gave no discomposure to Ellen or to her mother. Indeed, Mrs. O’Brien sat, the centre of her offspring, with the most contented air in the world, plying her knitting needles with easy assiduity, and dismissing child after child from her arms, as they severally grew out of her immediate province and into Ellen’s. Or she bustled, if there was bustling to do, with perfect indifference, it might seem, to one who did not know her, as to whether there were children in the house or not.