Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/38

 fourteen years of age, with school satchels over their arms.

"Norah Kate," said Mrs. Cassidy, "your dinner's waiting for you and Susan's along with it. Will you sit down now and eat it? And, before you do, let Susy hoosh the hens out of the house. It's too bold those same hens is getting."

The children did as they were bidden, without speaking. Doubtless they shouted and laughed elsewhere, in the school playground or on the roadside. Here at home they were silent. It may have been my presence that awed them; but I think that even the merriest child would have found it hard to laugh in the house where Mrs. Cassidy ceaselessly mourned for Sonny, whose real name was Michael Antony.

When Mrs. Cassidy spoke again the hens had been driven forth and the two girls were sitting at the table, with a bowl of boiled potatoes between them.

"It was a month, or maybe a little more, before the answer came back from his aunt; but when it did come I was glad to see it. What she said was that it would be no use for Michael Antony—his name was Michael Antony, though it was Sonny we always called him—that it would be no use for him to go to America. The times was bad out there, she said, and little likelihood of their getting better. Let the boy stay where he is, she said, where he has a living to get without working the