"Now, there's for yez! as lovely a letther as ever you seen, all the way from London, with a little picthur of an agle on the back o' it! 'Tis for Biddy Joyce, and maybe ye'll take it, Dermot, seeing your legs is younger than mine?"
Dermot was off already, climbing the mountain slopes in hot haste.
Biddy Joyce stood watching him from the door where Eily and he had parted months before.
"The poor fellow! it's like me own son he has been all this time, so kind when the sickness took hould o' Mike and me! It's meself that wishes he could forget me daughter, for it's poor comfort she will ever be to him. Faith, thin, Dermot," she exclaimed, as he came towards her, "phwat is it at all at all that ye come hurrying like this when the sun is warm enough to kill a body? Come inside, lad, and taste a sup o' me nice, sweet butther-milk; shure the churn's just done, though the butther's too soft entoirely"—she shook her head sadly.
"A letther!" cried Dermot, drawing out the treasured epistle from between the folds of his shirt, where he had hastily thrust it, that his hands might not soil the creamy paper.
"Thanks be to God!" exclaimed the woman, raising her eyes and hands for one moment to heaven. "'Tis long sence she wrote to me, the poor darlint, and it's many a time I lie awake and think o' the child all alone wid sthrangers not of her own blood. Whisht, boy, but you are worse nor meself I make no doubts"—as Dermot snatched the letter from her and hastily tore open the envelope. His face was pale with excitement and dread, for he feared, with a lover's jealous fear, that this was an announcement of Eily's marriage with some of the grand folks she had talked about.
"Rade it, Dermot; 'tis long sence I was at school, and the writin's not aisy."
Dermot obeyed, and this is the letter he spelt out slowly, with no little difficulty and several interruptions—
"Miss Vandaleur is sorry to tell Mrs. Joyce that her daughter Eily has been suffering from a severe illness; she has been in hospital for three weeks with brain fever, and until a few days ago was unable to give her mother's address. She is now much better, and the doctors hope to allow her to leave soon; she is being taken every care of by friends, but if some one could be spared to come such a long distance to see her, it would be the best thing for the poor girl, as she is always wishing for her home, and seems tired of living in London."
Biddy Joyce was weeping bitterly before the end of the letter, with her blue-checked apron held up to her eyes; three or four of the little ones had gathered around, staring with wide-open eyes.