dred times. Poor
mother! we used to get round her--Aileen, and Jim, and I--and say, 'Tell
us about the garden, mother.' She'd never refuse; those were her happy
days, she always said. She used to cry afterwards--nearly always.

The first thing almost that I can remember was riding the old pony,
'Possum, out to bring in the milkers. Father was away somewhere, so
mother took us all out and put me on the pony, and let me have a
whip. Aileen walked alongside, and very proud I was. My legs stuck out
straight on the old pony's fat back. Mother had ridden him up when she
came--the first horse she ever rode, she said. He was a quiet little old
roan, with a bright eye and legs like gate-posts, but he never fell down
with us boys, for all that. If we fell off he stopped still and began
to feed, so that he suited us all to pieces. We soon got sharp enough
to flail him along with a quince stick, and we used to bring up the
milkers, I expect, a good deal faster than was good for them. After a
bit we could milk, leg-rope, and bail up for ourselves, and help dad
brand the calves, which began to come pretty thick. There were only
three of us children--my brother Jim, who was two years younger than I
was, and then Aileen, who was four years behind him. I know we were both
able to nurse the baby a while after she came, and neither of us wanted
better fun than to be allowed to watch her, or rock the cradle, or as a
great treat to carry her a few steps. Somehow we was that fond and proud
of her from the first that we'd have done anything in the world for her.
And so we would now--I was going to say--but that poor Jim lies under a
forest oak on a sandhill, and I--well, I'm here, and if I'd listened
to her advice I should have been a free man. A free man! How it sounds,
doesn't it? with the sun shining, and the blue sky over your head, and
the birds twittering, and the grass beneath your feet! I wonder if I
shall go mad before my time's up.

Mother was a Roman Catholic--most Irishwomen are; and dad was a
Protestant, if he was anything. However, that says nothing. People that
don't talk much about their religion, or follow it up at all, won't
change it for all that. So father, though mother tried him hard enough
when they were first married, wouldn't hear of turning, not if he was to
be killed for it, as I once heard him say. 'No!' he says, 'my father and
grandfather, and all the lot, was Church people, and so I shall live
and die. I don't k