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WICKLOW. 233
plcasuring. Sure the quality have mighty quare notions of pleasuring, and
it’s well for us who live here they have. If I was a lady,” she continued,
and the spirit of the soldier’s wife roused within her, “ I’d take pleasure in
the sunny country of Portingale, or the gay town of Paris, and not among
onldwalls and-but it’s a wonderful holy place, that’s for certain, and so any
one may tell. The heart-trouble I had and have is about my son! My boy!
,‘my own boy! that I carried for scores of miles in an ould drum strapped on
tny back. Oh, sure the more trouble we have with a thing, the more we love
It. Oh my! to think of his being in jail, lie that was like a young eagle in the
sun! my brave, handsome boy 1” Poor Kathleen burst into tears, and sobbed
S0 bitterly that our distant followers heard her, and set up a sympathising
mumllll‘ Of “ God look down upon ye, Kathleen! poor craythur! Holy Mary
comfort her !-hear to that now !-Och hone!” At last she rolled her
stocking round the needles, put them into her pocket, dried her eyes with her
apmnyialld proceeded with her story in right earnest.
“ My boy grew up-it isn’t that I say it because I’m his mother-but every
One admired him; as a child he had as many divartin tricks as a monkey, and
F119)’ grew with him, until no sport of any kind went on through the place as
it iougllt without him. I’d have got him a trade, but somehow he never
seemed to take to anything but being a soldier, like his father, and people
thought it Was owing to my having carried him in the drum that he had
such a wonderful taste for music. I wanted to get him a bugle, which would
be 3 irate to the quality on the lake and in the mountains. All! he fancied
nothing” but the red coat. Now when he had so much war in his head: I at
last made up my mind to lose him the first time a recruiting sarghlt Came in
his ‘my 3 when one day-‘ Mother,’ he S11)’ 5: ‘tllcmis Something “'Ci8l‘3 heavy
0'1 my heart.’ ‘ What is it, dar1in’?’ I says, and taking a thought, started up
0" my feet, and had hardly l.)1‘e:1tl1 to say, ‘you're listed 1’ ‘For life,’ he says
groxving scarlet in the face, ‘for life, mother, and my commandinS'0mce1"‘3
mile Ally of Roundwood.’ VVell the first thought I had was to knock him
d0Wn with a spade-handle-a boy irot nineteen, and the purty iI1Y10C9“t child
he had brought into trouble not fifteen years of age! but I couldn’t touch him
‘A9 10075611 so I27.-e his fiztlicr. ‘ It’s done new, mother,’ he says, ‘and when I
509 Y011 and the house full of brothers and sisters, my heart’s like to burst;
but PH list: mother at once and then I’ll be “able f0 SUPPO” her! as my father
did 3’0“- ‘ God heip you ’ I says to him ‘your father was one of H1056 Whoid
spend llalf-It-Cr-0‘vn out (if Sixpence afdzlyg His poor father, ma’am, kept
hlmselfx and I had to keep myself and the children, ever and 31‘‘'‘‘)’S- Yet 0"
Payatle he was as fine a picture as ever you saw, and when I looked at him I
Vnx. 1, ‘ . '