ian, ask
if Ireland wasn't always the poor, unhappy country."

"But all that was so long ago," said John; "near a thousand years, was
it not? Since then it's been nothing but sorrow for the country and
for the people. What good is it to us that the country was happy in
King Brian's time? Will that help us pay the rent? And how we'll pay
the rent when the winter comes, I dunno, and if we don't pay it we'll
be evicted."

"Shaun," said his mother, calling him by the Irish name that she used
sometimes--"Shaun, we'll not be evicted; never fear that. Things are
bad, and they may be worse, but take my word, whatever comes, we'll
not be evicted."

"Mother," said the young man, "you never spoke the word, so far as I
know, that wasn't true, but I dunno how it'll be this time. We've been
workin' all we can and we only just manage to pay the rent and live,
and here's the summer over and the winter coming, and how will we pay
the rent then?"

The mother did not answer this question directly. She began talking in
a way that did not seem to have anything to do with the rent, though
it really had something to do with it, in her own mind, and perhaps in
her son's mind too.

"It's over-tired that you are with your hard day's work, Shaun," she
said, "and that and seeing Kitty so tired, too, has maybe made you
look at things a little worse than they are. We've never been so bad
off as many of our neighbors; you know that. And yet I know it's been
worse of late and harder for you than it might have been, and you
can't remember the better times that our family had, and that's why
you forget that the times were ever better. No, you wasn't born then,
but the time was when good luck seemed to follow your father and me
everywhere and always. Yes, and the good luck has not all left us
yet, though we had the bad luck to lose your father so long ago. We
could not hope to be rich or happy while the whole country was in such
distress as it's been sometimes, yet there were always many that were
worse off than we, and when I think of those days of '47 and '48 it
makes the sorrows seem light that we're suffering now. And I always
know that whatever comes, there'll be some good for me and mine while
I live. I've told you how I know that, but you always forget, and I
must tell you again."

They had not forgotten. They knew the story that was coming by heart,
but they knew that the old woman liked to tell it, so they let her go
on and said not a w