Page:Camperdown - Griffith - 1836.djvu/210

 Brady and Larry M'Gilpin, at one time the worst off, and the most dirty and ragged of them all, were now clean and decently dressed; they were each the richer too, in having another child added to their number, but they were very much set up about, as Larry had the felicity of calling his new daughter Sally M'Curdy—and never even when in a hurry did he shorten the name—and Jemmy only wished that his boy had been twins, that they might both have been called Oliver Price.

Mr. Price, Mrs. M'Curdy and Norah arrived the day before; a wagon followed them loaded with presents, and at ten o'clock on the day of trial the three went together to the shanty of Bonny Betty. The gate was thrown open, and after they had all walked over the grounds and had seen the neat order in which each garden was prepared for the winter, they went to Daniel M'Leary's shanty to look at his accounts.

"I'm thinking," said good natured Larry, "that the boys will get the premium any how, and if neither Bonny Betty nor myself is to get it, why the master, God bless his honour, could not do better than let the children have it"—so he stood back, and in this happy frame of mind waited the award of his industry.

Mr. Price, assisted by several gentlemen of the village, examined each man's account as rendered in by himself every day, all fairly written out by Jemmy Brady. The result was wonderful; these poor families had not only a large mess of vegetables of the best kind for their tables every Sunday, and from twelve to fifteen bushels of potatoes for their winter use, but they had cleared—first, the boys in the corner lot—twenty-one dollars each, making sixty-three dollars. This was after paying Bonny Betty a per centage for selling the different vegetables for them, and Betty was not