by the tiller of
the boat under the bridge.

At last the fisherman asked her to marry him, and she accepted him
joyously, undismayed by the diminutive proportions of their united
incomes.

"Sure, Mike dear," Bridget had declared cheerfully, "what's enough for
wan will be enough for two, and you'll never feel the bit I'll be
afther atin'."

This specious theory of political economy has beguiled into matrimony
many a young couple who fail to take account of the important
difference that what is enough for two may not be enough for three,
and still less for three times three. So it fell out with the Davitts.
For the first year of their married life, Bridget went on working in
the factory, and kept her tiny tenement tidy, and Michael mended nets
on the doorstep, and sold fish in summer, and loafed in the winter in
contented assurance that life would continue to treat him well. But
the next year opened less prosperously. Bridget was compelled to give
up her work in the factory, and when, in the middle of a particularly
rigorous winter, a baby was born to the house of Davitt, the outlook
would have appeared discouraging to any one less optimistic than
Bridget. But she found much cause for satisfaction in the thought that
the baby had come at this particular time, when Michael could be at
home to help take care of the house; and above all in the reflection
that the baby was a boy, "who'd not be thrubblin' any wan long, for
before we know it, Mike, me jewel, he'll be lookin' afther you and
me."

Part of her self-congratulation had justified itself, for the baby
Leonard had grown up into one of those helpful, "handy" lads who
sometimes are sent to be the salvation of impecunious households. At
an incredibly early age, he began to feel the responsibilities of the
family on his manly little shoulders, and as the procession of small
Davitts entered the world, he took each one under his protecting care.
Dennis, Ellen, Maggie, Tommy, Katie, and John had found their way into
the family circle, and no one hinted that there was not place and
porridge for the last as well as the first.

As the years went on, Michael Davitt lost whatever alertness of
temperament he might once have possessed. New England seems to endow
some of her children with such a surplus of energy, that she is
compelled to subtract a corresponding amount from the share of others.
Michael Davitt was one of the others. His experiences as a fisherman
had persuade