The Widow OCallaghans Boys | Page 7

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 tittle-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 nobody, 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 coonthry'," 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 coarse 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 assailed 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.
[Illustration: "'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