between the bridge below and the Post Office in Dublin. Would you
believe that? I went out without saying a word, and I got the old
stocking, where I keep a bit of money, and I made out what I owed
the master. Then I went in again, and "Master," says I, "Mick's
learning enough for the likes of him. You can go now and safe home
to you." And, God bless you, avourneen, Mick got a fine job after on
the railroad.'

Another day, when she was trying to flatter me, she said: 'Ah, God
bless you, avourneen, you've no pride. Didn't I hear you yesterday,
and you talking to my pig below in the field as if it was your
brother? And a nice clean pig it is too, the crathur.' A year or
two afterwards I met this old woman again. Her husband had died a
few months before of the 'Influence,' and she was in pitiable
distress, weeping and wailing while she talked to me. 'The poor old
man is after dying on me,' she said, 'and he was great company.
There's only one son left me now, and we do be killed working. Ah,
avourneen, the poor do have great stratagems to keep in their little
cabins at all. And did you ever see the like of the place we live in?
Isn't it the poorest, lonesomest, wildest, dreariest bit of a hill
a person ever passed a life on?' When she stopped a moment, with
the tears streaming on her face, I told a little about the poverty I
had seen in Paris. 'God Almighty forgive me, avourneen,' she went
on, when I had finished, 'we don't know anything about it. We have
our bit of turf, and our bit of sticks, and our bit to eat, and we
have our health. Glory be to His Holy Name, not a one of the childer
was ever a day ill, except one boy was hurted off a cart, and he
never overed it. It's small right we have to complain at all.'

She died the following winter, and her son went to New York.