age. She
carried water to them from the village well and tidied up their cottages
at least once a week.

The village well was the point of departure in many a romance. There
the boys and girls met several times a day. Many a boy's first act of
chivalry was to take the girl's place under the hoop that kept the cans
apart and carry home the supply of water.

Half a century after the incident that played havoc with the dreams and
visions of which she was the central figure, Anna said to me:

"I was fillin' my cans at th' well. He was standin' there lukin' at me.

"'Wud ye mind,' says he, 'if I helped ye?'

"'Deed no, not at all,' says I. So he filled my cans an' then says he:
'I would give you a nice wee cow if I cud carry thim home fur ye.'

"'It's not home I'm goin',' says I, 'but to an' oul neighbor who can't
carry it herself.'

"'So much th' betther fur me,' says he, an' off he walked between the
cans. At Mary McKinstry's doore that afthernoon we stood till the
shadows began t' fall."

From the accounts rendered, old Mary did not lack for water-carriers for
months after that. One evening Mary made tea for the water-carriers and
after tea she "tossed th' cups" for them.

"Here's two roads, dear," she said to Anna, "an' wan day ye'll haave t'
choose betwixt thim. On wan road there's love an' clane teeth (poverty),
an' on t'other riches an' hell on earth."

"What else do you see on the roads, Mary?" Anna asked.

"Plenty ov childther on th' road t' clane teeth, an' dogs an' cats on
th' road t' good livin'."

"What haave ye fur me, Mary?" Jamie Irvine, Anna's friend, asked. She
took his cup, gave it a shake, looked wise and said: "Begorra, I see a
big cup, me bhoy--it's a cup o' grief I'm thinkin' it is."

"Oul Mary was jist bletherin'," he said, as they walked down the road
in the gloaming, hand in hand.

"A cup of sorrow isn't so bad, Jamie, when there's two to drink it,"
Anna said. He pressed her hand tighter and replied:

"Aye, that's thrue, fur then it's only half a cup."

Jamie was a shoemaker's apprentice. His parents were very poor. The
struggle for existence left time for nothing else. As the children
reached the age of eight or nine they entered the struggle. Jamie began
when he was eight. He had never spent a day at school. His family
considered him fortunate, however, that he could be an apprentice.

The cup that old Mary saw in the tea leaves seemed something more than
"blether" when it was