give one deep sob. The next time I saw her,
she was quite composed; only for the white cheek and the black dress,
you would not know that the burning feel of a child's last kiss had ever
touched her lips.

My father's wife mourned for him after another fashion. _She_ could not
sit quiet, she must work hard to keep the life in them to whom he gave
it; and it was only in the evenings when she sat down before the fire
with Mary in her arms, that she used to sob and rock herself to and fro,
and sing a low, wailing keen for the father of the little one, whose
innocent tears were always ready to fall when she saw her mother cry.
About this time my mother got an offer from some of the hucksters in the
neighborhood, who knew her honesty, to go three times a week to the next
market-town, ten miles off, with their little money, and bring them back
supplies of bread, groceries, soap, and candles. This she used to do,
walking the twenty miles--ten of them with a heavy load on her back--for
the sake of earning enough to keep us alive. 'Twas very seldom that
Richard could get a stroke of work to do: the boy wasn't strong in
himself, for he had the sickness too; though he recovered from it, and
always did his best to earn an honest penny wherever he could. I often
wanted my mother to let me go in her stead and bring back the load; but
she never would hear of it, and kept me at home to mind the house and
little Mary. My poor pet lamb! 'twas little minding she wanted. She
would go after breakfast and sit at the door, and stop there all day,
watching for her mother, and never heeding the neighbors' children that
used to come wanting her to play. Through the live-long hours she would
never stir, but just keep her eyes fixed on the lonesome _boreen_;[I]
and when the shadow of the mountain-ash grew long, and she caught a
glimpse of her mother ever so far off, coming toward home, the joy that
would flush on the small, patient face, was brighter than the sunbeam on
the river. And faint and weary as the poor woman used to be, before ever
she sat down, she'd have Mary nestling in her bosom. No matter how
little she might have eaten herself that day, she would always bring
home a little white bun for Mary; and the child, that had tasted nothing
since morning, would eat it so happily, and then fall quietly asleep in
her mother's arms.

At the end of some months I got the sickness myself, but not so heavily
as Richard did before. Any way, he and