The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys Part 2

"We'll be used to it in toime," said the heavy-eyed little widow to yawning Pat and Mike the next morning. "And the more things you get used to in this world the better for you. I belave it's quite something loike to be able to sleep with engines tootin' and blowin' off steam, and bells a-ringin', and cars a-b.u.mpin'. Even a baby can slape where 'tis quiet, you know."

Breakfast had been over an hour.

"Now, Pat," said his mother, "that's not the way to make beds. Off with them covers and make 'em over again."

Mrs. O'Callaghan was standing in the doorway and looking in at the roomful of beds. "I don't mane it for unkindness, Pat, but sure and the way you've got 'em made up they look jist loike pigs' nests with covers over 'em. There, that's better," she commented when Pat had obediently made all the beds over again under her instructions. "You can't larn all there is to bed-makin' in a day. 'Tis practice makes parfect, as your copy book used to say. But I'm thinkin' you'll have it in a week, for you're your father's son, and he was a quick wan to larn, was Tim. And now I'll be teachin' you a bit of cookin' while I have the chance. You must larn that as quick as you can, Pat, for a poor cook wastes a sight, besides settin' dishes of stuff on the table that none but pigs can eat.

And in most places the pigs would get their messes, but here we've got no pigs, and whativer you cook we've got to be eatin'. Andy was askin'

for beans for to-morrow a bit ago. What's your ideas about bakin' beans, Pat? How would you do it?"

Pat thought a moment. "I'd wash 'em good, and put 'em in a pan, and bake 'em," he said.

"Sure, then, you've left out one thing. With that receipt, Pat, you'd need a hammer to crack 'em with after they was baked. No, no, Pat, you pick 'em over good and put 'em a-soak over night. In the mornin' you pick 'em over again, and wash 'em good and bile 'em awhile, and pour off the water, and bile 'em again in fresh water with jist enough salt in it, and then you put 'em in the oven and bake 'em along with a piece of pork that's been a-bilin' in another kittle all the toime."

Pat looked a trifle astonished, but all he said was, "_Baked beans_ is a queer name for 'em, ain't it?"

Mrs. O'Callaghan smiled. "That's the short of it, Pat, jist the short of it. The names of things don't tell half there is to 'em sometoimes. And now for the dinner. It's belavin' I am you can cook it with me standin'

by to help you out when you get into trouble."

Pat tied on a clean ap.r.o.n, washed his hands and set to work.

"That's it! That's it!" encouraged Mrs. O'Callaghan, from time to time, as the cooking progressed. "And I'll jist be tellin' you, Pat, you're not so green as some girls I've seen. I'd rather have a handy b'y as an unhandy girl any day."

A little later she stood in the shanty door. "Come, Moike!" she called.

"Bring the little b'ys in to dinner. Pat's a-dishin' it a'ready."

Mike had been detailed by his prudent mother as a guard to prevent his small brothers from making too intimate acquaintance with freight cars and engines. He was by this time pretty hungry, and he marshaled in his squad with scant ceremony.

A week went by and the widow was settled. Each boy was placed in his proper cla.s.s at the public school, and the mother had her coveted four washing places.

"I didn't come to town to be foolin' my toime away, so I didn't," said Mrs. O'Callaghan, as she sat down to rest with a satisfied face. "Pat,"

she continued, "you've done foine with the work this week. All I've to say is, 'Kape on.' It'll kape you busy at it with school on your hands, but, sure, them as is busy ain't in mischief, nayther."

The next week all went well with the widow and Larry as usual, but the boys at school found rough sailing.

"Ah, but Mrs. Thompson's the jewel!" cried Mrs. O'Callaghan on Monday evening. "She do be sayin' that Larry's a cute little fellow, and she has him in to play where she is, and he gets to hear the canary bird sing, so he does. Didn't I be tellin' you, Pat, that I knew there was them in this town would help me that way? But what makes you all look so glum? Didn't you foind the school foine the day? Niver moind! You ain't acquainted yet. And jist remember that iverybody has a deal to bear in this world, and the poor most of all. If anybody does you a rale wrong, come tell me of it. But if it's only nignaggin', say naught about it.

'Twon't last foriver, anyway, and them that's mane enough to nignag a poor b'y is too mane to desarve attintion, so they are."

The widow looked searchingly at her older sons. She saw them, under the tonic of her sound counsel, straighten themselves with renewed courage, and she smiled upon them.

"I'll niver be makin' Tim's b'ys weak-spirited by lettin' 'em t.i.ttle-tattle of what can't be helped," she thought.

"Now, b'ys, heads up and do your bist!" she said the next morning as she went to her work.

But it was one thing to hold up their heads at the shanty, and quite another to hold them up on the noisy, swarming campus where they knew n.o.body, and where the ill-bred bullies of the school felt free to jeer and gibe at their poor clothing and their shy, awkward ways.

"Patrick O'Callaghan!" yelled Jim Barrows derisively.

It was recess and the campus was overflowing with boys and girls, but Pat was alone. "Just over from the 'ould c.o.o.nthry'," he continued. "You can tell by his clothes. He got wet a-comin', and just see how they've shrunk!"

The overgrown, hulking fellow lounged closer to the tall and slender Irish boy, followed by the rough set that acknowledged him as a leader.

Some measured the distance from the ends of Pat's jacket sleeves to his wrists, while others predicted the number of days that must elapse before his arms burst through the sleeves.

The spirit of the country-bred boy quailed before this coa.r.s.e abuse, which he knew not how to resent. He glanced about him, but no way of escape offered. He was hemmed in. And then the bell struck. Recess was over. He thought of his brothers in different grades from himself, though in the same building. "Is there them that makes it hot for 'em when they can?" he said anxiously to himself. "We'll have to be stayin'

more together mornin's and noons and recesses, so we will."

But staying together did not avail. Jim Barrows and his set found more delight in tormenting several unresisting victims than they could possibly have enjoyed with only one.

"Ah, but this nignaggin's hard to stand!" thought Pat a week later. He was on his way to school. Pat was always last to get off on account of his work. That morning Jim Barrows was feeling particularly valiant. He thought of the "O'Callaghan tribe," as he called them, and his spirits rose. He was seventeen and large for his age. "Them low Irish needs somebody to keep 'em to their places," he said to himself, "and I'm the one to do it."

Just then he spied Andy a few steps ahead of him, Andy, who was only eleven, and small and frail. Two strides of his long legs overtook the little boy. A big, ugly hand laid itself firmly on the shrinking little shoulder. Words of abuse a.s.sailed the sensitive ears, and were followed by a rude blow. Then Jim Barrows, regarding his duty done for that time, lounged on, leaving the little fellow crying pitifully.

A few moments later, Pat came along, and, finding his favorite brother crying, insisted upon knowing the reason. And Andy told him. With all the abuse they had borne, not one of the brothers had been struck before. As Pat listened his anger grew to fury. His blue eyes flashed like steel.

"Cheer up, Andy!" he said, "and run on to school. You needn't be afraid.

I can't go with you; I've business on hand. But you needn't be afraid."

He had just ten minutes till school would call. Who was that, two blocks off, loitering on a corner? Was it?--it was Jim Barrows.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Cheer up, Andy!' he said."]

With a dogged step that did not seem hurried, Pat yet went rapidly forward. Straight up to the bully he walked and looked him firmly in the eye. "You struck my brother Andy because you thought you could," he said. And then, in the language of those Western boys, "he lit into him." "'Tis Andy's fist is on you now!" he cried, while he rained blows on the hulking coward, who did not offer to defend himself. "And there!"

with a tremendous kick as Jim Barrows turned to run, "is a taste of his foot. Touch him again if you dare!"

Needless to say, he didn't dare. "I hear your brother Andy's been fighting," said the princ.i.p.al, as he stopped Pat the next day in the street. "At least, there are marks of Andy's fist and Andy's foot on Jim Barrows." His eyes twinkled as he spoke and then grew grave again.

"Fighting's a bad thing in general, but you are excusable, my lad, you are excusable."

Pat looked after the princ.i.p.al going with a quick firm step on his busy way, and thought him the finest man in town, for, so far, n.o.body had given the poor Irish boy a word of sympathy and encouragement.

That evening Pat ventured to tell his mother.

"And so that's what the princ.i.p.al said, is it?" commented Mrs.

O'Callaghan. "He's a man of sinse. Your father was a man of great sinse, Pat. Fightin' is a bad thing, so it is. But your father's gone, and it's you must kape the little wans from harm in his place. You'd be but a bad brother to stand by and see any wan strike little Andy. There's some things has got to be put a stop to, and the sooner it's done the better, says I." Then after a pause, "I hope you larn your lessons, Pat?"

"I do, mother."

"I thought you would. Your father always larnt all that come handy to him. Larnin's no load, Pat. Larn all you can."

Now Pat, with the exception of Latin, was no whit behind other boys of his age, for he had been sent to school in the country from the time he was five years old. The fight being over, he gave his mind thoroughly to his books, a thing he could not do while he did not know what to expect from Jim Barrows and his set, and his cla.s.s-standing was high.

And now the first of April was at hand. The O'Callaghans had been a month in town and the widow was beginning to see that she had overestimated the purchasing power of what she could earn at four washing places. Four dollars a week needed a supplement. How could it be supplied? Mrs. O'Callaghan cast about in her mind. She had already discovered that Wennott offered a poor field for employment, so far as boys were concerned, and yet, in some way, her boys must help her. By day, by night she thought and could hit upon nothing unless she took her sons from school.

"And that I'll not do," she said, "for larnin' is at the root of everything."

CHAPTER IV