Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/71



ERY soon after her husband's death, things began to go wrong with Mrs. Flanagan. She had "a long, weak family," which was against her. Eight children she had, and the six eldest of them were girls, who were little good on the land. Labouring men were expensive to hire, and impossible to get when they were most wanted. Cattle sickened and died mysteriously. The old mare got feeble; the young mare broke her leg in a bog-hole. Year after year the pigs brought no price, and feeding stuff was dear. For five years the widow struggled on in an incompetent manner against impossible circumstances. Then she collapsed.

She owed four years' rent to the agent, and she owed a sum which did not bear thinking of to Patrick Sweeny, Mr. Patrick Sweeny, Esq., J.P., D.C., who kept the shop. The statement of the amount of this debt brought a weakness on Mrs. Flanagan when it arrived by post, a weakness from which she did not rally for more than a week. It was impossible to believe that the Indian meal, on which she fed her children and her chickens, the occasional lock of seed potatoes, the bag or two of patent fertiliser, the grain of tea, could have cost