ed Boreen, and the wide silence of the bog, with the soft sweet
wind blowing across it, and the cows and all, and the neighbours to pass
the time of day with, let alone the smell of the turf-fire of an
evening! Homesick the poor boy was, and didn't know it.

The way it came about that Art left home was, he got tired of things
there, the very things he wanted now. And there was some said, the
mother was too good and fond with him. She'd lay the two hands under his
feet any hour of the day or night; thought the sun shone out of him, so
she did. And Art was always good and biddable with her; never gave any
back-talk, or was contrary. But all the time he wanted to be himself. He
was much like a colt kept in a stall, well fed and minded, but he wants
to get out to stretch his legs in a long gallop all the time.

So there's why Art went off from Ardenoo to the Big Smoke, and got on
the best ever you knew. He was very apprehensive about machinery, could
understand it well, and got took on by a great high-up doctor to mind
his motor for him. The old people were that proud when they heard of it.

"Sure it's on the Pig's Back Art is now, whatever!" they said, "with his
good-lookin' pound a week!"

Wealth that sounded, away off in Ardenoo. But the sorra much spending
there is in it in a city, where you're paying out for everything you
want. Delia did the best she could with it, but it wouldn't do all she
wanted.

Still, she pleased Art. Small and white in the face she was, as Mrs.
Moloney had imagined her. Sewing she used to be, a bad life for a girl
to be at it all day. But she flourished up well after getting married.
And what Art had looked into, when he was courting, was the big,
longing-looking dark eyes of her, and the gentle voice and ways, and the
clouds of soft brown hair ... well, sure every eye forms a beauty of its
own. But Art might have done worse nor to marry Delia Fogarty that never
asked to differ from a word he said, till the notion came up of they
going to Ardenoo for the Christmas. When the letter asking them came, he
near riz the roof off the house, the shout he gave, he was that
delighted in himself to be going back home.

"But what's a trouble to you, Delia?" he says, when he had time to take
notice that she wasn't looking as rejoiced as he expected, only sitting
there with her eyes upon the child in her arms; "a body'd think you
didn't care about going at all!" he says, half vexed.

"I ... I'd like t