“We must give the dirty thing a rub, Jimmy; it isn’t so clane as you’ve been used to see it, my man!”
“It is ten times cleaner, ma’am,” returned I, honestly; “it’s beautiful.”
“Well, maybe it ’ll pass; but your daddy’s so perticlar, you know; he’ll be grumblin’ about that dirthy ould butther-boat, don’t ye think, Jimmy?”
“What dirty butter-boat, ma’am?”
“That on the hob with the baby’s pap in it, Jimmy.”
“Dirty! it isn’t dirty; nothing’s dirty, except”—
“Except what? out with it! except what, now?”
Mrs. Burke flushed red as she said this, and spoke very quick and sharp; perhaps it was lucky for me that she did, for in my ignorant eyes the only exception to the prevailing cleanliness was her freckled face and hands, and that was what I was about to tell her. Seeing, however, how she was likely to take it, like the little hypocrite I was, I replied to her impatient demand for an explanation—
“Except me, ma’am. Here’s dirty hands!”
My sin carried its sting. Uttering an exclamation as though never in the course of her life she had seen hands so hideously dirty (though, in truth, they were more than usually clean,) she laid the baby down, and taking me into her own room, there gave my face as well as my hands such a scrubbing with yellow soap and the corner of a rough towel as brought the tears to my eyes. Then with her own comb she combed my hair, and with her own oil oiled it; and somehow or another, contrived a curl on either temple. Then she turned my pinafore, and brought the brass buckle of my belt well to the front, and gave it a rub to brighten it.
“Will you have your tea now, Jimmy; or will you wait a little till daddy comes home?” asked she, when she had set me on my stool by the fire. For a considerable time before this I had been contemplating the pile of toast inside the fender, my increasing hunger doing battle against my deep-seated prejudice against Mrs. Burke’s freckles. The latter lost ground rapidly. To be sure, she had taken the bread in her hands to cut; but everything objectionable must have departed from it in the process of toasting. But then, she had to butter it! True again; but the butter on the top round was by this time nearly all frizzled in. Thought I, “If she should ask me to have a piece of toast, I will say yes, and take that top piece.” But, unfortunately, just as she asked me, “Would I have my tea now, or wait until my father came home?” she stooped to blow off a “black” that had settled on the side of the butter-boat, and her freckled arm actually touched the crust of that very top round.
“I’ll wait a little, thanky, ma’am,” said I. “I am not very hungry.”
Mrs. Burke worked at making potato-sacks; and when I told her that I would rather not begin my tea at present, she went into her own room, and in a minute returned, bringing with her three ready-made sacks and the materials for a fourth. The ready-made sacks she placed on a chair by her side, and then fastening a big canvas apron decently about her, so that her clean cotton gown might not suffer, she sat down to work.
It takes a good while to make a potato-sack. I don’t know how long exactly; but by the time Mrs. Burke had finished the one she had taken in hand, the candle had burned down full two inches. Mrs. Burke, during the last half-hour at least, had grown more and more fidgety. From time to time she got up from her work, and looked out at the window, and listened at the door, grumbling and muttering under her breath. Growing sleepy, I disregarded the pains she had been at to arrange my hair, and scratched it into uproar with both my hands. She rapped out at me in the spitefullest manner for this, and called me a name which, thanks to my mother’s diligence and solicitude, I did not deserve. She had one corner of the sack pinned to the table with a sort of bradawl.
“Come here, you (something) little pig,” said she: “you may as well hould the candle, as sit shnorin’ and rootin’ there.”
So I went and held the candle until the sack was finished; by which time the fire had burnt hollow, and, falling in, made a terrible litter over the white hearth. The toast was scorched dry; and a little gas coal, lurking in a chink at the back of the hob, suddenly spouted out a flame at the china butter-boat, and sputtered against it until you could scarcely tell the red from the blue for soot.
“Devil take the whole bilin’!” exclaimed Mrs. Burke, glaring round fiercely when she saw all this, and at the same time snatching up the butter-boat at the risk of burning her fingers. “Here am I, and there is he; and prisintly he’ll be rollin’ in as drunk as Davy’s sow! It’s cashtin’ pearls before shwine, intirely;” and for a moment she scowled about her, and at me in particular, as though I had deliberately, and out of malice, set the gas-coal at her butter-boat. But in the same breath as it were, she recovered, and turning her wrath to music, began humming the fag end of a tune.
“Never mind, Jimmy,” said she; “there’s worse misfortunes at say.” And then she turned to, briskly mending the fire, and sweeping and dusting. She wiped the soot from the butterboat, and gave it a polish on her canvas apron; she turned the pile of toast topside bottom; and fetching her hair-brush from the back room, smoothed my hair with it. Then she folded up the sack she had just finished, and laid it on the top of the other three. Then she went and fetched stuff for another sack, and sat down to work again quite comfortable.
I was roused from dozing on my stool by the sound of my father’s footsteps, blundering and uncertain, on the stairs. He pushed open the door and came in.
Chapter VIII. In which Mrs. Burke courts my father.
“Come in, Mr. Ballisat,” said Mrs. Burke, in a kind and cheerful voice, and as though my father had knocked.
My father came in. He took three or four steps into the room, and then he stood still, staring about him in amazement. That he had been drinking rather heavily was evident from the circumstance of his wearing the peak of his cap over his ear, instead of the front of his head. In one hand he carried a large plaice, and in the other a bundle of firewood.
“You’ve come home earlier than was expicted, Mr. Ballisat, and caught me at work, sir,” said Mrs. Burke, apologetically. “You’ll pardon the liberty of me sittin’ in your room; I’ll run away in a minit.”
So saying, she got up from her chair and began to bustle about, lifting back to the wall the chair on which the four made sacks were lying, as well as that which she had been sitting on at her work, and there she stood, looking so bright and kind, with the half-made sack on her arm, and her hand resting on the other four.
It was plain to see that my poor father was completely overcome. Balanced, as it were, between the fish and the firewood, he stood in the middle of the room, gazing in serious astonishment, first at the butter-boat on the hob; then at the baby, tucked up so clean and comfortable in bed. Then, with tears in his eyes, he looked at me, and at the toast and the tea-things, wagging his head in the most solemn manner; and presently he sank into a chair and buried his eyes in the cuffs of his jacket, the wood rolling away unheeded, and the plaice sliding from his grasp down on to the sanded floor.
“Shure you’re not well, James Ballisat,” said Mrs. Burke, solicitously. “The throubles of this day have been too much for you, poor man!”
“No, no; it isn’t not that so much. It’s—it’s”—
“Askin’ your pardon; but that’s what it is, and nothin’ else,” said Mrs. Burke. “But don’t mind me, poor fellow; it’s been my own exshperience, and I know exactly the state of your feelin’s, Jim.”