"Arrah, phwat news is it likely an old man like me should bring? You ask
me so eager-like that I misdoubt me but it's some colleen that's caught
your eye!" Patrick's eyes twinkled merrily as he made his little joke.
Dermot's face saddened, and he turned to his scythe once more.
His father, sorry that he had brought back the cloud once more to his
son's face, pulled the letter from his pocket and laid it on the wall.
"Now, there's for yez! as lovely a letther as ever you seen, all the way
from London, with a little picthur of an agle on the back o' it! 'Tis
for Biddy Joyce, and maybe ye'll take it, Dermot, seeing your legs is
younger than mine?"
Dermot was off already, climbing the mountain slopes in hot haste.
Biddy Joyce stood watching him from the door where Eily and he had
parted months before.
"The poor fellow! it's like me own son he has been all this time, so
kind when the sickness took hould o' Mike and me! It's meself that
wishes he could forget me daughter, for it's poor comfort she will ever
be to him. Faith, thin, Dermot," she exclaimed, as he came towards her,
"phwat is it at all at all that ye come hurrying like this when the sun
is warm enough to kill a body? Come inside, lad, and taste a sup o' me
nice, sweet butther-milk; shure the churn's just done, though the
butther's too soft entoirely"--she shook her head sadly.
"A letther!" cried Dermot, drawing out the treasured epistle from
between the folds of his shirt, where he had hastily thrust it, that his
hands might not soil the creamy paper.
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