There seemed a spell on the place. Ellen said—“Sure there’s no luck here any more.” And a neighbor, who had a son over sea, put a new thought in her head. Ellen was often desired to act as amanuensis to answer his letters. If her epistles were not clerkly they were written as dictated, and it may be shrewdly suspected that the person to whom they were written liked them none the less, that he detected the handwriting, though they were signed, “your affectionate mother.” Such a paradise as American letters revealed to her, could not fail to make her own discomforts worse by contrast. But the paradise was to her for a long time a thing unhoped for, unthought of. At last a new resolution occurred to her.
“Sure, mother,” she said one day, “we’d better be in Ameriky.”
The mother smiled at the impossibility. But Ellen had set her heart on it. She was the prop of the house—the only one in it, indeed, who had any strength or determination left. Need we say she carried her point? She reasoned father and mother into the desirableness of the change, and they could but acknowledge that any thing would be preferable to their present situation. The correspondence to which she had access furnished her with arguments, and the will once found for the enterprise, the way presented no longer insuperable obstacles. All had been discussed, and the journey was fully determined upon, when Paddy reached the cottage with his plans in his head—selfish plans, Ellen afterward said they were.
“Sure,” cried she as he entered, “here’s Patrick, too, will go with us.”
“To be sure I will—where?” answered Paddy, delighted once more to find his home cheerful.
“To Ameriky, Patrick,” said his father, taking the pipe from his mouth to watch his son’s face. The son looked sad, astonished, and bewildered. It was all new to him, and he could make no reply, save to repeat —
“A-mer-iky!”
“To be sure,” said Ellen. “What’ll we wait here for, doing no good at all? There’s Phelim may be president, and Mike a djuke, and Terrence a parliament man, and Bridget may marry a lord, and—”
“And Ellen?” inquired Patrick, with a quizzical look, which contrasted curiously with his wo-begone expression.
“Sure the best of the land will be hers,” said her mother. “Hasn’t she been the born slave of the whole of ye’s? She didn’t go away from her mother’s side, not she, for betther board and keeping!”