ternizing with the reserved fawn-coloured goat and
demonstrative terrier, who alone took an intelligent interest in them.
For his grandmother was satisfied with the sense of having him "playin'
around handy," and could not be counted company.

But after nearly a twelvemonth had passed, Con seemed one day to be
seized with a fresh fit of homesickness. It was a brilliant late summer
morning, yet to old Mrs. Quin's perplexity, he continued to sit on his
little stool, with his slice of griddle-cake half-crumbled in his lap,
and answered her suggestions that he should finish his breakfast, and
run out to play, by irrelevant requests for his own ould mammy. He
wanted her cruel bad, he said, and there was nothin' ailed him, and he
wouldn't like to look for blackberries along the hedge--or to throw
stones for Bran--or even to be given a whole ha'penny to go buy himself
a grand sugarstick down at the shop--he only wanted his mammy. Such was
his attitude and refrain all that day and the next. After which his
grandmother said to her neighbour, Judy Ahern, that she couldn't tell
what had come over the child, and he had her fairly distracted
listening to him.

And Mrs. Ahern said: "Maybe he might be gettin' somethin'; there's a
terrible dale of sickness about. But he doesn't look very bad to say.
Arrah now, Con avic, why wouldn't you run out and play a bit this lovely
mornin'? Wantin' your mammy? Sure that's foolish talk, and she nobody
can tell how far away this minyit. It's just a notion you have....
'Deed, ma'am, I dunno, but maybe you'd a right to let him home to her,
or else he might get frettin' and mopin' himself into the fever. He's a
poor little crathur; the face of him this instant isn't the width of a
ha'penny herrin'."

"And he so continted," said Mrs. Quin, "until he took his fantigue. Rael
quare it is."

"Most things do be quare and ugly these times," said Mrs. Ahern,
"Goodness help us all. There's poor Mrs. Duff thravellin' off to-morra,
to go stay wid her brother at Gortnakil. Very belike she'd take him
along; and he'd be aisy landed home, once he'd got that far."

And on the morrow Con did actually set off with Mrs. Duff, feeling half
appeased and half compunctious, as people do when they get what they
have clamoured for; sorry a little to lose sight of Bran, staring
open-mouthed after him down the lane; and relieved through all by a
vague sense that he was going whither his heart-strings pulled. If he
had bee