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"First Pat and then Moike and then you, Andy, with your book, and now little Jim with his foightin'. And that's what beats me, that I should be proud of my b'y's foightin'. And I am that." Friday evening seemed a long way off to little Jim when he lay down on his bed that night. He had never attended a party in his life.
O'Brien took off his coat and bared his right arm. His under lip still trembled, but he held a tight grip on himself. The captain's penknife was opened and passed to Gorman. "Mahoney, tell me mother what happened to me, if ever ye get back," O'Brien requested. Mahoney nodded. "'Tis black murder, black an' damned," he said. "The b'y's flesh'll do none iv yez anny good. Mark me words.
"Tom Auley's been up watchin' this three nights now," confides the other old gossip. "Thim dirty b'y's troublin' his pigs in the sthy, and having every stramash about the place, all for revinge upon him for gettin' the police afther thim when they sthole his hins. 'T was as well for him too, they're dirty bligards, the whole box and dice of them."
"I'll come up whenever you want me and I can get away, Maggie, an' next time I'll bring you more comfort, I hope. Good-bye." "Och, darlin'! T'row a kiss, Billy. Look, Aileen, at the kisses me b'y's t'rowin' yer!" she exclaimed delightedly; and Billy, in the exuberance of his joy that tears were things of the past, continued to throw kisses after the lady till she disappeared down the street.
"Well, you know, b'ys, there's things as fathers and mothers can understand an' talk about, as no b'y's fit to see to the end on, an' so they better go to sleep, an' wait till their turn comes to be fathers an' mothers theirselves. Go to sleep direc'ly, or I'll break every bone in your bodies!"
He came downstairs one night in the twilight, ready to go to Lilith. His aunt and an old crony were talking in the kitchen; the crony was old, and Catherine, supposing Roger was out of the house, was talking loudly in that horrible voice of hers with still more horrible zest and satisfaction. "Yes, I'm guessing it'll be a match as ye say. Oh the b'y's doing well.
"And what did you say then?" she asked. "I says to him, 'How can I get to be like you, sir, when you won't let me do the way you do?" "And then?" "Then he opened the door, and his hand said, 'Go outside. And just as I was goin' he said, 'Ask your mother." "'Twasn't for naught he got made a gineral," commented Mrs. O'Callaghan. "'Tis himsilf as knows a b'y's mother is the wan.
"De gent could buy a badge and get in," volunteered Old Bill. The lid of Mike's right eye drooped like the slide of a lantern, as he answered: "He couldn't get wan now it's too late; just wait ye here, sir, and if the b'y's there wit' the nags, I'll sind him out."
The b'y's a bit hurt, an' here you'll be out o' the wind at least." They all got as far down the stair as its room would permit the elder boys with their heads hardly below the level of the wind. But by and by one of them crept down past his mother, feebly soothing the whimpering baby, and began to feel what sort of a place they were in. "Here's a door, father!" he said.
He planted himself before them and harangued them like any third-rate criminal lawyer. "I tell you, gen'lemen," he declared, "it's no small b'y's job to keep that fahmily in arder!" and he proceeded to describe them as a cantankerous lot, to be ruled only by that ideal justice tempered by mercy which he was apparently a master in dispensing.
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