The Widow OCallaghans Boys | Page 5

opened wide the door.
In they trooped, and, for a moment, everybody seemed to be talking at
once.
[Illustration: "For every one carried something."]
It sometimes needs a great deal of talk to make a kind deed seem like
nothing at all. Sometimes even a great deal of talk fails to do so. It
failed to-day.
Tears were running unheeded down the widow's face. Not even her
boys knew how everything was gone, and she left with no money to
buy more. And everybody tried not to see the tears and everybody
talked faster than ever. Then the first church bell rang out, and old and
young turned to go. There came a little lull as one after another gave
the widow's hand a cordial clasp.
"My friends," said Mrs. O'Callaghan--she could be heard now--"my
dear friends, I thank you all. You have made my heart strong the day."
"I call that a pretty good way to put in time on Sunday," said one man
to another as they were untying their teams.
"Makes going to church seem worth while, for a fact," returned his
neighbor.
Not till the last vehicle had passed from sight did the widow look round
upon what her neighbors had left her, and then she saw sufficient
pantry stores to last even seven growing boys for a month. And among
the rest of her gifts she found coal for a week. She had not noticed her
sons as she busily took account of her stock, but when she had finished
she said, "B'ys, b'ys! 'tis your father sees the hearts of these good

people this day and rej'ices. Ah, but Tim was a ginerous man himsilf!
It's hopin' I am you'll all be loike him."
That night when the younger boys were in bed and only Pat and Mike
sat keeping her company, the widow rose from her seat, went to a box
already packed and took therefrom an account book and pencil.
"They're your father's," she said, "but it's a good use I'll be puttin' 'em
to."
Writing was, for the hand otherwise capable, a laborious task; but no
help would she have from either of her sons.
"May I ask you not to be spakin'?" she said politely to the two. "It's not
used to writin' I am, and I must be thinkin' besides."
Two hours she sat there, her boys glancing curiously at her now and
then at first, and later falling into a doze in their chairs. She wrote two
words and stopped. Over and over she wrote two words and stopped.
Over and over until she had written two words and stopped fifty times.
And often she wiped away her tears. At last her task was done, and
there in the book, the letters misshapen and some of the words
misspelled, were the names of all who had come to her that morning.
Just fifty there were of them. She read them over carefully to see that
she had not forgotten any.
"Maybe I'll be havin' the chance to do 'em a good turn some day," she
said. "I will, if I can. But whether I do or not, I've got it here in writin',
that when all was gone, and I didn't have nothin', the Lord sint fifty
friends to help me out. Let me be gettin' down in the heart and
discouraged again, and I'll take this book and read the Lord's doin's for
me. Come Pat and Moike! It's to bed you must be goin', for we're to
move to-morrow, do you moind?"

CHAPTER III

According to Mrs. O'Callaghan's plans, the moving was accomplished
the next day. There was but one load of household goods, so that the
two teams of their kind neighbor made only one trip, but that load, with
the seven boys and their mother, filled the shanty by the tracks to
overflowing. The little boys immediately upon their arrival had been all
eyes for the trains, and, failing them, the freight cars. And they had
reluctantly promised never to ascend the iron freight car ladders when
they had been in their new home only one hour.
"Whin you're dailin' with b'ys take 'em in toime," was the widow's
motto. "What's the use of lettin' 'em climb up and fall down, and maybe
break their legs or arms, and then take their promise? Sure, and I'll take
it before the harm's done, so I will."
Such tooting the delighted little fellows had never heard. "Barney!"
whispered Tommie, in the middle of the night, with a nudge. "Barney!
there's another of 'em!"
"And listen to the bell on it," returned Barney. "Ain't you glad we
moved?"
And then they fell asleep to wake and repeat the conversation a little
later. Larry was the only one who