'm as tired as I 'm rich," she added, with a sigh;
"'t is few can say the same in this lazy land."

"Sure, let's ate it together; 'tis a big little cakeen," urged Johnny,
breaking the bun and anxiously offering Nora the larger piece. "I can
like the taste of anything better by halves, if I 've got company. You
ought to have a good supper of tay and a piece of steak and some
potaties rather than this! Don't be giving yourself nothing but the
saved cakes, an' you working so hard!"

"'T is plenty days I 'd a poorer supper when I was at home," said Nora
sadly; "me father dying so young, and all of us begging at me mother's
skirts. It's all me thought how will I get rich and give me mother all
the fine things that's in the world. I wish I 'd come over sooner, but
it broke my heart whinever I 'd think of being out of sight of her
face. She looks old now, me mother does."

Nora may have been touched by Johnny's affectionate interest in her
supper; she forgot all her shyness and drew nearer to him as they
walked along, and he drew a little closer to her.

"My mother is dead these two years," he said simply. "It makes a man
be very lonesome when his mother 's dead. I board with my sister
that's married; I 'm not much there at all. I do be thinking I 'd like
a house of my own. I 've plinty saved for it."

"I said in the first of coming out that I 'd go home again when I had
fifty pounds," said Nora hastily, and taking the other side of the
narrow road. "I 've got a piece of it already, and I 've sent back
more beside. I thought I 'd be gone two years, but some days I think I
won't be so long as that."

"Why don't you be afther getting your mother out? 'T is so warm in the
winter in a good house, and no dampness like there does be at home; and
her brother and her sister both being here." There was deep anxiety in
Johnny's voice.

"Oh, I don't know indeed!" said Nora. "She's very wake-hearted, is me
mother; she 'd die coming away from the old place and going to sea.
No, I 'm going to work meself and go home; I 'll have presents, too,
for everybody along the road, and the children 'll be running and
skrieghing afther me, and they 'll all get sweeties from me. 'T is a
very poor neighborhood where we live, but a lovely sight of the say.
It ain't often annybody comes home to it, but 't will be a great day
then, and the poor old folks 'll all be calling afther me: 'Where's
Nora?' 'Show me Nora!' 'Nora, sure, wh