The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys Part 11

Just then the boards came and were thrown off with a great clatter. Mrs.

O'Callaghan hurried to the door. "Now, b'ys, what's the meanin' of this?" she questioned when the man had gone.

"Have my rose, mother dear," said Pat.

"And it's a pretty rose, so it is," responded Mrs. O'Callaghan, receiving it graciously. "But it don't answer my question. What'll you be doin' with them boords?"

"Now, mother, it's Mike's plan, but I'm into it, too, and we want to surprise you. Can't you trust us?"

"I can," was the answer. "Go on with your surprise." And she went back into the shanty.

Then the boys set to work in earnest. Four scantlings had come with the boards, and were speedily planted firmly.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pat and Mike building the kitchen.]

"We don't need no saw, for the boards are of the right length, so they are. A man at the yard sawed 'em for me. He said he could as well as not. Folks are mighty good to us, Mike; have you noticed?"

"The right sort are good to us, of course. Them Jim Barrows boys are anything but good. They sets on all of us as much as they dares."

By three o'clock the roof was on, and the rough sc.r.a.ps Mike had collected were patched into a sort of protection for a part of the east side of the new kitchen.

"Now let's be after the stove!" cried Mike.

In they went, very important.

"Mother, dear, we'd like to be takin' down your stove, if you'll let us," said Pat.

The widow smiled. "I lets you," she answered.

Down came the stovepipe to be carried out. Then the lids and the doors were taken off to make the heavy load lighter. And then under went the truck that Andy had run to borrow, and the stove was out.

Mrs. O'Callaghan carefully refrained from looking at them, but cheerful sounds came in through doors and windows as the big boys worked and the little ones crowded close with eager enjoyment of the unusual happening.

Presently there came tones of dismay.

"Pat," said Mike, "there's no hole to run the pipe through. What'll we do?"

"We'll have to be cuttin' one, and with a jackknife, too, for we've nothin' else. But I'll have to be goin' now. I was to be back by four, you know."

"Then we'll call the mother out and show her the surprise now," said Mike. "I'll make short work of cuttin' that hole after you're gone."

"Will you be steppin' out, mother dear?" invited Mike gallantly.

"You'll not be roastin' by the stove no more this summer," observed Pat.

The widow came out. She looked at the rough roof supported by the four scantlings, and then at her boys.

"Sure, 'tis a nice, airy kitchen, so it is," she said. "And as for the surprise, 'tis jist the koind of a wan your father was always thinkin'

up. As you say, I'll not be roastin' no more. But it's awful warm you've made my heart, b'ys. It's a warm heart that's good to have summer and winter." And then she broke down. "Niver do you moind me, b'ys," she went on after a moment. "'Tis this sort of tears that makes a mother's loife long, so 'tis."

"Well, Mrs. Brady, ma'am, we're done," reported Pat at a few minutes before four. "Mike, he'd got up and dug all the holes before day, and it didn't take us so long."

"And is the stove out?" inquired Mrs. Brady kindly.

"It is, ma'am. Mike will be cookin' out there this evenin'. Mike's gettin' to be the cook, ma'am. I show him all I learn here, and he soon has it better than I have myself."

Mrs. Brady smiled. How Mike could do better than Pat she did not see, but she could see the brotherly spirit that made Pat believe it.

"Perhaps you had better go over again this evening," she said, "just to see if the stove draws well in the new kitchen."

"Do you mean it, ma'am?" asked the boy eagerly.

"Yes."

"Thank you, kindly. I'd like to go, but I wasn't goin' to ask. My mother says askin's a bad habit. Them that has it is apt to ask more than they'd ought to many times."

Meanwhile, up on the roof of the new kitchen in the hot afternoon sun sat Mike with his knife. He had marked out the size of the pipe-hole with a pencil, and with set lips was putting all the force of his strong, young arms into the work. A big straw hat was on his head--a common straw, worth about fifteen cents. Cl.u.s.tered below were the little boys.

"No, you can't come up," Mike had just said in answer to their entreaties. "The roof won't bear you."

"'Twould bear me, and I could help you cut the hole," said Jim.

"There goes Jim again," soliloquized the widow. "Wantin' to cut a round hole in a boord with a knife, when 'tis only himself he'd be cuttin', and not the boord at all. It's not so much that he's iver for doin' what he can't, but he's awful set against doin' what he can. Jim, come here!"

she called.

Jim obeyed.

"You see how loike your father Pat and Moike and Andy is, some wan way and some another. Do you want to be loike him, too?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Up on the roof sat Mike with his knife."]

Jim owned that he did.

"Well, then, remimber your father would niver have been for climbin' to the roof of the new kitchen and cuttin' a round hole in a boord with a knife so as to run the pipe through when he was your soize. But he would have been for huntin' up some dry kindlin' to start the fire for supper.

So, now, there's your job, Jim, and do it good. Don't come back with a skimpin' bit that won't start the coal at all."

With lagging steps Jim set off to the patch of hazel brush north of the shanty to pick up such dry twigs as he could. His mother gazed after him.

"Tim left me a fortune when he left me my b'ys, all but Jim," she said, "and see if I don't make something out of him, too. Pat and Moike and Andy--showin' that you sense what they're doin' is enough for 'em. Jist that will kape 'em goin' foine. But Jim, he'll take leadin' with praise and shovin' with blame, and he'll get both of 'em from me, so he will.

For sure, he's Tim's b'y, too, and will I be leavin' him to spoil for want of a harsh word now and then? I won't that. There's them in this world that needs settin' up and there's them that needs takin' down a peg. And wanst in a while you see wan that needs both of 'em, and that's Jim, so 'tis. Well, I know it in toime, that's wan thing."

Jim made such slow progress that the hole was cut, the pipe run through, and Mike was beginning to look about for his own kindling when he made his appearance.

"Well, Jim," said his mother, taking him aside, "there's something the matter with your feet, I'm thinkin', you've been gone so long. You was all but missin' the chance of seein' the first fire started in the new kitchen. There's something to remimber--seein' a sight loike that--and then you have it to think about that it was yoursilf that provided the kindlin' for it. All this you was on the p'int of losin' through bein'

slow on your feet. Your father was the spriest koind of a b'y, I'm told.

Only show him an errand, and he was off on it. Get some spryness into your feet if you want to be like your father, and run, now, to see Moike loight the fire. And don't be reachin' to take the match out of his hand, nayther. Your toime of fire buildin' will come."

Away went Jim. He was certainly spry enough now. Mike was just setting the blazing match to the kindling when he reached the group around the stove. At the front stood the little boys, and in a twinkling Jim had pushed them one this way, one that, in order to stand directly in front of the stove himself.

"There he goes again," sighed the widow. "'Tis a many pegs Jim will have to be took down, I'm thinkin'."