PATRICK O’BRIEN.

A TALE OF HUMBLE LIFE.

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BY H. HASTINGS WELD.

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The father of Ellen O’Brien was a small farmer, whose situation when the child began to think at all, seemed to her the realization of all that is happy, and all that is cheerful in this world. Children do think very early; much earlier than their elders suspect. But happily for them they are easily contented. They look at the bright side, and unconscious of the superior advantages, and the greater comforts of others, have no temptation to discontented comparisons, and no motive for uneasy envy.

Ellen’s earliest memory of marked and positive happiness—that is to say, of an incident which conferred particular pleasure, was connected with a child—a very small child. She remembered how her father told her to “make a lap, now,” and placed the wee thing upon the knees which she prepared with much ado to receive it. She was told that this was her little brother, her own little brother; and she hugged it in troubled happiness, almost afraid to touch, lest she should hurt it. She gazed upon it with that undefined feeling of mingled awe and pleasure with which little children regard less children. She looked at its fragile hands and wondered, if she took them in hers, whether they would fade or drop to pieces, like the delicate blossoms which she had often killed with kindness. And when it cried—oh, but she was astonished! That such a little thing should be so ungrateful while she coddled and cared for it, and nursed it ever so tenderly, was more than she could well endure. She thought it well deserved, and ought to have a whipping, only that a whipping might hurt it—and that she would not consent to.

It was, however, not a great while before a safe acquaintance grew up between the new comer and Ellen. He was called Patrick, after his father, and his father’s father before him. Ellen was three years his senior. That difference in their ages would have been a wonder; only that it was explainable. Another little Patrick, his predecessor, was “called home,” as his father said, “before he had scarce a taste of the world at all.” And Ellen, from hearing so often of the other little Patrick, and from her indistinct memory of a baby that she saw one day, as if in a dream, and did not see any more, learned to think of infants as of little things that would die if they were not carefully watched. And this Patrick she was resolved should not slip away for want of attention from his sister; therefore she nursed him as carefully as if that had been her sole vocation.

The wonder about babies grew less as Ellen grew older. At first, in her childish little heart, she thought every little baby must be a little Patrick, and that no new one could come while there was another about. But familiarity destroys marvels. She found there could be little Phelims and Terrences as well as Patricks, Bridgets and Kathleens as well as Ellens. Child after child lifted its clamorous voice for food and nursing in Patrick O’Brien’s cottage, until at last when he was asked respecting his children, he was fain to count them upon his fingers. And he always began with Ellen and his thumb—Paddy came next, and the formula was—“There’s Ellen, then little Paddy that was called early, then Paddy that is now—sure Ellen and Paddy are the thumb and forefinger to us. What would the mother do without them, at all?”

Ellen grew to a fine, stout girl, with a cheerful open face when you spoke to her—but there was a shade of care and thought over it when in repose, which you may often see in the oldest daughter of a poor man. She moved and acted as if while the tribe who had exhausted the family names of the O’Briens were born children to her mother, she was born before them for a deputy mother to them all. Legs and arms were all over the cottage, in all sorts of places where they shouldn’t be, and she jerked them out of harm’s way, with a half-petulant dexterity which was pleasant to observe. Tow-heads and shock-heads popped up continually, and she pushed them aside with a “there now, wont you be aisy!” which was musical, with a very little discord. And there was an easy and natural carelessness of authority and half rebellion in obedience, which was truly puzzling to strangers, but which gave no discomposure to Ellen or to her mother. Indeed, Mrs. O’Brien sat, the centre of her offspring, with the most contented air in the world, plying her knitting needles with easy assiduity, and dismissing child after child from her arms, as they severally grew out of her immediate province and into Ellen’s. Or she bustled, if there was bustling to do, with perfect indifference, it might seem, to one who did not know her, as to whether there were children in the house or not.

But sometimes her interference became necessary as a measure of last appeal, and she came down on them with hearty whacks which were invariably poulticed with a word or two, half scolding and half good-natured wit. The children were thus reconciled to the propriety and necessity of certain summary inflictions, which at the same time they took care to avoid, when it could be done without too much trouble. Often there were voices heard in a higher key than is considered proper in a drawing-room, and sometimes there was a debouchment of children out at the door, and a consequent squealing of little pigs, and fluttering of chickens before it; which showed the mother’s activity at ejection. But no drawing-room ever sheltered more gentle hearts, and no mother of high degree ever followed a scolding with more patience than Mrs. O’Brien did. There was no malice in her, and a half-laugh stood ever in her eye, as she looked out at the door on the living miscellanies she had put in motion, and said—“Sure you can’t turn a hand, or step any place at all, for pigs, chickens and childer!”

There is often more room in the heart than in the house. The O’Briens began to feel themselves crowded—or rather to feel the inconvenience of too many sitters for their stools, without knowing precisely—or rather without permitting themselves to acknowledge what caused their discomfort. There were too many mouths for the potatoes, as Patrick senior and his wife were at last compelled to admit in their matrimonial committee of ways and means, and the question now became, how could they diminish the one, or increase the other. The lesser fry were out of the question. Nothing could be done in the way of removing them; nor did the thought occur to father or mother, who loved the children with true Irish hearts; that the smaller children were in the way, or that any of the little ones could possibly be spared, if the lord-lieutenant himself wanted a baby. So they began canvassing at the other end of the long list.

“There was Ellen,” said the father, doubtfully.

“Ellen! Sure you’ll not be putting her away, and nobody to mind the childer? What is the wages, I’d like to know, would make her place good to us?”

And Ellen, it was decided, was a fixture.

“There is Paddy,” said the mother with some hesitation. “Sure he’s a broth of a boy, and it is time he should do for himself—it is. It’s little in life he’s good for here, anyway.”

The father did not think so. Many were the little “turns” that Paddy cheerfully undertook, but all of them could not in conscience be made to appear to amount to an indispensable service, or any thing like it.

“Look at him now?” said the mother. And they looked at Pat, whose all good-natured face, unconscious that it was the subject of observation, bloomed like a tall flower amid the lesser O’Briens who clustered about him.

“Sure there’s a tribe of them!” said O’Brien.

“But look at Paddy! He’s the moral of yourself at his age, Patrick; with the same niver-a-thought, lazy look!”

It was questionable whether the wife’s affectionate reminiscence was a compliment or not; and an expression of sad humor, between a smile and a scowl, passed over O’Brien’s face, as he regarded his elder son, the heir to his personal beauties and accomplishments—and to his cast off clothes. It was of little use the latter were, for the father usually exacted so much of them, that when they descended to the son, sad make shifts were necessary to keep up in them any show of integrity, however superficial. And the stitches which were hurriedly taken between whiles, by his mother, had a comprehensive character which brought distant parts of the garments into a proximity very far from their original intention. The difference in size between father and son permitted a latitude in this respect, and the gathering together of the fabric produced an appearance more picturesque than elegant. As to the extra length of the garments that soon corrected itself, and Paddy junior’s ankles presented a ring of ragged fringe; or a couple of well-developed calves protruded in easy indifference. Indeed he was a broth of a boy, good natured and “bidable,” as he was ragged and careless. It was time that his good properties should be made available—and that some of the other young ones should have a chance at their father’s wardrobe.

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