It was questionable whether the wife’s affectionate reminiscence was a compliment or not; and an expression of sad humor, between a smile and a scowl, passed over O’Brien’s face, as he regarded his elder son, the heir to his personal beauties and accomplishments—and to his cast off clothes. It was of little use the latter were, for the father usually exacted so much of them, that when they descended to the son, sad make shifts were necessary to keep up in them any show of integrity, however superficial. And the stitches which were hurriedly taken between whiles, by his mother, had a comprehensive character which brought distant parts of the garments into a proximity very far from their original intention. The difference in size between father and son permitted a latitude in this respect, and the gathering together of the fabric produced an appearance more picturesque than elegant. As to the extra length of the garments that soon corrected itself, and Paddy junior’s ankles presented a ring of ragged fringe; or a couple of well-developed calves protruded in easy indifference. Indeed he was a broth of a boy, good natured and “bidable,” as he was ragged and careless. It was time that his good properties should be made available—and that some of the other young ones should have a chance at their father’s wardrobe.
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CHAPTER II.
It was a sad thing to part with Paddy. But necessity knows no law, and he was apprenticed to a farmer with more land and fewer children than Patrick O’Brien. And it was no less sore to Paddy to leave the homestead, than for his brothers and sisters and father and mother to give up the “moral of his father.” Those whose hearts are not united by a community in privation, and whose easy lives present no exigencies in which they are compelled to feel with and for each other, can separate without tears, and be re-united without emotion. But the few miles of distance which were now to be placed between little Paddy and the cot where he was born, seemed to him almost an unbounded desert; and the going away from home, though for so small a journey, was equivalent to banishment. He took a sorrowful review of all the familiar objects which had been his companions from his birth. There was not a scratch on the cabin walls that did not seem to him as a brother; not a mud-hole around the premises that was not as an old familiar friend. But he manfully tore himself from all; and it was with no little sensation of independence that he felt that henceforth he was really to earn his own living, and to eat bread which should not diminish the breakfasts of the rest. There were other circumstances too, as yet undeveloped, which aided him in becoming reconciled. The inmates of the new home were not strange to little Paddy, and one of them, in especial, he had a childish weakness and fondness for. It is not our intention to say that Paddy and little Norah knew any thing about what boarding-school misses call undying affection; for such nonsense was beyond their years, and schools were above their opportunities. But leave we Paddy to establish himself in his new home, while we return to the O’Briens.
Sorrow a bit of difference they soon found, did Paddy’s absence make in the consumption of food. The potatoes were as extensively devoured as ever, and little Paddy’s hand-turns were much missed. His bright face gone left a blank which nothing seemed to fill; though Mrs. O’Brien, blessings on her, as far as enumeration went, soon made up the same tale that there was before Paddy’s extradition. There was a half thought in the father’s mind of christening the new comer Paddy also, since the removal of his favorite boy was like death to him; and he really began to feel as if names would run short if the wearers were not duplicated. This notion, however, was over-ruled by the bright face of Pat himself, who came at the first opportunity to bid the new brother good-morning.
“Which of the childer is that wid you, Paddy?” said his mother, who had removed with her knitting to the bed in the dark corner.
“Sure it’s none of our childer at all,” said Paddy, while Norah blushed for the first time in her life, and both had the first glimpse of a new revelation. “It’s only the master’s Norah. I thought may be, the walk would be lonely.”
Mrs. O’Brien looked on the consequences of her own fear of loneliness—consequences which had multiplied around her, till an hour’s solitude, asleep or awake, had become one of the never-to-return joys which the song sings of. She had a prophetic dream of a similar destiny for Paddy and Norah, but said nothing to put precocious notions into children’s heads. Ellen did not half like her brother’s bringing a stranger home with him—and she would have let Norah perceive her displeasure, but her heart was too kind to do any body a willing disservice. Norah was soon put at ease—almost. But the double visit was not repeated till long afterward. Meanwhile Norah and Paddy were “set to thinking.” That visit, made in the innocence of their hearts robbed those hearts of a portion of that innocence. Before, they had been as a new brother and sister—now as they grew in years constraint increased between them. At last, resolved upon what he called a better understanding, Paddy forced Norah to confess in words what he might easily have taken for granted. And they pledged themselves, young as they were, to a life of privation, and the same chance of more mouths than food, which had been Paddy’s own idea of a household ever since he could remember—his experience in the new home excepted.
Paddy went home one evening without Norah, fully resolved to divulge what he had determined on, in set words—a labor he might have saved himself, for it was all guessed long before. His time was out now in a few months, and he had resolved, as soon as one bondage was concluded to enter into another. In the years that he had been away, he had visited home too often to be surprised at the changes which had taken place. Ellen looked old—she seemed the mother of her brothers and sisters, for care fast brings the marks of years. And the mother, tall, gaunt and thin, looked as if she might have been the grand-parent of the children around her. Patrick senior was better saved, but time showed its marks on him too; and those not light ones. He was more peevish than formerly; he retained the same black pipe longer in service, and kept it, too, in use more constantly, for there was scarce an hour of the day when its fragrance was not issuing. And as strong tobacco is too apt to require strong accompaniments, we are compelled to acknowledge that Patrick O’Brien was contracting a taste for less harmless potations than buttermilk.
Poor and content is rich. Poor and discontented is poor indeed. Ellen felt the infection of unhappiness, and the very children seemed to have grown miserable. Squalor and negligence had marked the whole household, and Paddy had learned to make his visits unpleasant performances of duty, instead of the hilarious occasions that they once were. It was no wonder that he preferred a quiet evening in his second home, where he could sit and watch Norah’s busy fingers, rather than a visit to his own father’s house; for there cracked and dissonant voices jarred harshly, children cried, and the welcome which he once met had changed to the utterance of mutual complaints, and perhaps to unsuspended jarrings among those whom he loved.