ith dignity; "'tis manny the
day we all played there together, for all we 're so scattered now and
some dead, too, God rest them! Sure, you 're a nice little gerrl, an'
I give you great welcome and the hope you 'll do well. Come along wit'
me now. Your Aunty Biddy's jealous to put her two eyes on you, an' we
never getting the news you 'd come till late this morning. 'I 'll go
fetch Nora for you,' says I, to contint her. 'They 'll be tarked out
at Duffy's by this time,' says I."

"Oh, I 'm full o' tark yet!" protested Nora gayly. "Coom on, then,
Uncle Patsy!" and she gave him her strong young hand as he rose.

"An' how do you be likin' Ameriky?" asked the pleased old man, as they
walked along.

"I like Ameriky fine," answered the girl gravely. She was taller than
he, though she looked so slender and so young. "I was very
downhearted, too, l'avin' home and me mother, but I 'll go back to it
some day, God willing, sir; I could n't die wit'out seeing me mother
again. I 'm all over the place here since daybreak. I think I 'd like
work best on the railway," and she turned toward him with a resolved
and serious look.

"Wisha! there 's no work at all for a girl like you on the Road," said
Uncle Patsy patiently. "You 've a bit to learn yet, sure; 't is the
mill you mane."

"There 'll be plinty work to do. I always thought at home, when I
heard the folks tarking, that I 'd get work on the railway when I 'd
come to Ameriky. Yis, indeed, sir!" continued Nora earnestly. "I was
looking at the mills just now, and I heard the great n'ise from them.
I 'd never be afther shutting meself up in anny mill out of the good
air. I 've no call to go to jail yet in thim mill walls. Perhaps
there 'd be somebody working next me that I 'd never get to like, sir."

There was something so convinced and decided about these arguments that
Uncle Patsy, usually the calm autocrat of his young relatives, had
nothing whatever to say. Nora was gently keeping step with his slow
gait. She had won his heart once for all when she called him by the
old boyish name her mother used forty years before, when they played
together by the Wishing Brook.

"I wonder do you know a b'y named Johnny O'Callahan?" inquired Nora
presently, in a somewhat confidential tone; "a pritty b'y that's
working on the railway; I seen him last night and I coming here; he
ain't a guard at all, but a young fellow that minds the brakes. We
stopped a long while out