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Ha, ha; bedad I wisht it would too, the ould naygur." Meanwhile the children pattered up the hill and spoke no word until they reached the summit. Sitting down under the great portcullis, they munched their bread and sugar amicably together, Mike's eyes pensively gazing in front of him the while, and Roseen's roving hither and thither with quick, eager glances.
The slight crackling sound which had originally accompanied its progress, was replaced by a sullen roar; volumes of ruddy smoke filled the air; a pungent, peculiar smell penetrated even to Roseen's room, almost suffocating her. Would no one hear, would no one heed?
The shadow of the ruined tower fell obliquely across the golden-green carpet of their ball-room; but the children danced on, Roseen's curls shaken into a light feathery nimbus round her brow, a beautiful colour in her cheeks, and her little white teeth parted in a smile of delight; while Mike pranced and capered, as though old Peter's stick had never fallen about his shoulders, and there were no holes in the roof at home.
With a deal of shouting and huzzahing, the little procession halted at length at Monavoe, where Roseen's health was drunk in due form, and then Mike's, and then Pat's, and then Mrs. Clancy's, and then Roseen's again; and at last the escort went reluctantly homewards, and Roseen conveyed her charges to the apartment she destined for them.
Whither would he go? Big tears rolled down Roseen's cheeks as she thought of his desperate plight. As she sat watching and waiting for she dared not venture out too soon lest her grandfather's suspicions should be aroused a sudden rattling and fumbling at the lock of her own door made her turn round.
Pat Clancy, who had maintained a certain dignified reserve all day, not quite liking the notion of being regarded as Roseen's pensioner, and not being certain whether this new move did not involve a sacrifice of independence, was now fairly overcome. "God bless you, me child!" he said brokenly, "ye were always the good little girl, Roseen. Herself and me will be quite at home here."
Sure, when a little spark got on it out o' me pipe it burnt up the same as if it was tindher." As she spoke she drew her stool up to the table; she was unusually loquacious and sensible that day. The potations in which she, in common with the other members of Roseen's establishment at Monavoe, had indulged having apparently at once loosened her tongue and brightened her wits.
"Well," pursued Pat, "every door in the whole place was shut up, an' every windy was bolted an' barred, an' though the poor Spider ran this way an' that way, an' round the house an' round the house, not a hole nor a crack could he find; an' there he had to stop outside in the wind an' the rain." Roseen's face betokened extreme compassion for the Spider.
He was fond of the child, as was every one in the neighbourhood, and being a fellow-sufferer from the hard-heartedness of her grandfather, who was, as has been said, his landlord, was perhaps the most violent of her champions. Roseen's blue eyes, peering through her tangled sheaf of golden-brown curls, took a hasty and discontented survey of the small kitchen. "Isn't Mike here?" she inquired.
Clancy's own particular little rusty kettle was soon singing merrily on the hob, and Judy presently appeared with the griddle cake and a roll of butter of Roseen's own making. "She's afther fetchin' it herself from the dairy," she remarked. "It's herself has the grand hand for butter, God bless her!"
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