stfully towards them.

"Dickens a sign or taste ye'll get, then, if only to tache ye better
manners. Be off, now, an' don't let me see ye agin."

"I'm hungry," says the boy, tears coming into his eyes.

"Oh, Mrs. Daly!" says Monica, in a distressed tone.

"A deal o' harm it will do him to be hungry, thin!" says the culprit's
mother, with an angry voice, but with visible signs of relenting in her
handsome eyes. "Be off wid ye now, I tell ye." This is the last burst of
the storm. As the urchin creeps crestfallen towards the doorway her rage
dies, its death being as sudden as its birth. "Come back here!" she
cries, inconsistently. "What d'ye mane be takin' me at me word like
that? Come back, I tell ye, an' go an' ate something, ye crathur. How
dare ye behave as if I was a bad mother to ye?"

The boy comes back, and, raising his bonny head, smiles at her fondly
but audaciously.

"Look at him, now, the blackguard," says the mother, returning the smile
in kind. "Was there ever the like of him? Go an' ate yer praties now,
and thank yer stars Miss Monica was here to say a good word for ye."

Paddy, glad of his rescue, casts a shy glance at Monica, and then, going
over to where his grandmother and the pot of potatoes rest side by side,
sits down (close cuddled up to the old dame) to fill his little empty
stomach with as many of those esculent roots as he can manage, which, in
truth, is the poor child's only dinner from year's end to year's end.
And yet it is a remarkable fact that, in spite of this scanty fare, the
Irish peasant, when come to man's estate, is ever strong and vigorous
and well grown. And who shall say he hasn't done his queen good service,
too, on many a battle-field? and even in these latter days, when sad
rebellion racks our land, has not his name been worthy of honorable
mention on the plains of Tel-el-Kebir?

"I don't think he _looks_ like a bad boy, Mrs. Daly," says Monica,
reflectively, gazing at the liberated Paddy.

"Bad, miss, is it?" says the mother, who, having made her eldest born
out a villain, is now prepared to maintain he is a veritable saint. "You
don't know him, faix. Sure there niver was the like of him yet. He is a
raal jewel, that gossoon o' mine, an' the light of his father's eyes.
Signs on it, he'd die for Daly! There niver was sich a love betwixt
father an' son. He's the joy o' my life, an' the greatest help to me.
'Tis he minds the pig, an' the baby, an' ould granny there, an'
e