“Oh, Mary acushla, she’s read it in my face!” Nancy cried in remorseful tones, “an’ I promised I’d keep it from her.”
“Keep what from her?” Mary asked, anxiously. “Is it anything about Johnny, Nancy agra?”
“Yis, Mary,” Nancy answered sorrowfully, “Sure an’ it wrings me heart to tell you. Poor Johnny was killed—run over at a crossin’ three years ago.”
“An’ why didn’t they let us know?” Mary sobbed, “Where was the use of deceivin’ us?”
“It was the poor boy’s wish,” Nancy replied tearfully. “They took him to the hospital and kept him alive for a day, an’ before he died, he made Andy an’ the girls promise they’d never let his mother know of his end. He had a hundred and fifty dollars saved to take him home an’ he bade them sind it to her a little at a time wid his love. His last words were ‘Don’t let poor mother know! It would kill her! Don’t let poor mother know!’”
There was a long silence, broken only by the subdued sobbing of the girls. At last Mary said, wiping her eyes with her apron:
“By the help of God, Nancy, we must still keep it from mother. She’s not long for this world, an’ Johnny, poor boy, was the light of her eyes!”
Going out of the cabin, they found Mrs. Ryan still seated upon the bench.
“Mother darlin’,” Mary said softly, “it’s growin’ cold, an’ you’d better come in for your cup of tay.”
There was no answer. A smile of ineffable peace lingered upon the aged, care-worn face. In the faded blue eyes, whose unseeing gaze was fixed upon the merciless ocean which had taken her darlings, one by one, from her arms, shone the wondrous light “that never was on sea or land.”