It is wonderful how impressions are caught by the young from those who are older and have more experience than themselves. Little Atty, who had heard the conversation already detailed, begged his mammy not to send him to bed that night until his father would come home, especially as Mat Mulrennan, an in-door apprentice, who had been permitted that evening to go to see his family, had not returned, and he wished, he said, to sit up and let him in. The mother was rather satisfied than otherwise, that the boy should sit up with her, especially as all the other children and the servants had gone to bed.
“Mammy,” said the boy, “isn't it a great comfort for us to be as we are now, and to know that my father can never get drunk again?”
“It is indeed, Atty;” and yet she said so; with a doubting, if not an apprehensive heart.
“He'll never beat you more, mammy, now?”
“No, darlin'; nor he never did, barrin' when he didn't know what he was doin'.”
“That is when he was drunk, mammy?”
“Yes, Atty dear.”
“Well, isn't it a great thing that he can never get drunk any more, mammy; and never beat you any more; and isn't it curious too, how he never bate me?”
“You, darlin'? oh, no, he would rather cut his arm off than rise it to you, Atty dear; and it's well that you are so good a boy as you are—for I'm afeard, Atty, that even if you deserved to be corrected, he wouldn't do it.”
“But what 'ud we all do widout my father, mammy? If anything happened to him I think I'd die. I'd like to die if he was to go.”