Chapter 11

“Daniel M’Leary.”

“Daniel M’Leary.”

“Daniel M’Leary.”

“Daniel M’Leary.”

On the fourth of July the four gates were thrown open, and all the village, rich and poor, went in, for the first time, to see what the idle hours of six persons had accomplished. The praises that the men and boys received, to say nothing of Bonny Betty, who was there in all her pride with her children, quite compensated them for any little extra fatigue they had undergone. The boys and girls were neatly dressed, and the poor women, the wives of the gardeners, began to take rank among the better order of labourers, for their husbands were beginning to attract notice. It was constantly—“Well, Jemmy Brady, how does yourgarden come on? are you almost tired yet?” “Tired! Is it I that am tired, sir, when I and the wife and children had a dish of potatoes of my own raising larger nor any you ever seed in our foolish little market? Sure you have not seen Bonny Betty’s stall, as they call it—only just go over to-morrow, being Monday, ye’ll see a sight—early York cabbage—ye see I’ve learned the names of things since I belonged to your garding—and there’s real marrowfat peas, and big white ingans, as big as a tay saucer, and ye’ll may be hardly see the end of the beets and carrots, they’re so long, and then there’s the early turnip just fit to melt in your mouth; sure we had a mess of them with our pork and potatoes this blessed day, and how could a poor man like me, with seven childer, all babies nearly, get the like of turnips and white ingans, unless I made them grow myself, barring I might send to York for them, but poor people can’t do that.”

Every one of the shanty people took a pride in having vegetables on the table every Sunday, and in a little time Bonny Betty did nothing, literally, but sell vegetables; and most scrupulous was she in keeping the different interests separate. Each man and boy had his basket, and every morning they were filled and carried to Betty’s shed, erected for the purpose. No market woman was ever prouder, and none certainly so happy, if we make allowance for the increased illness of her youngest child. But even this she did not see, for so great a change had taken place in the circumstances and health of all the rest, that she went on, hoping that in God’s good time little Christie would get well too.

The trial day came—the first of November. It was on Saturday, and the six candidates took a holiday, for they could now afford it. JemmyBrady and Larry M’Gilpin, at one time the worst off, and the most dirty and ragged of them all, were now clean and decently dressed; they were each the richer too, in having another child added to their number, but they were very much set up about, as Larry had the felicity of calling his new daughter Sally M’Curdy—and never even when in a hurry did he shorten the name—and Jemmy only wished that his boy had been twins, that they might both have been called Oliver Price.

Mr. Price, Mrs. M’Curdy and Norah arrived the day before; a wagon followed them loaded with presents, and at ten o’clock on the day of trial the three went together to the shanty of Bonny Betty. The gate was thrown open, and after they had all walked over the grounds and had seen the neat order in which each garden was prepared for the winter, they went to Daniel M’Leary’s shanty to look at his accounts.

“I’m thinking,” said good natured Larry, “that the boys will get the premium any how, and if neither Bonny Betty nor myself is to get it, why the master, God bless his honour, could not do better than let the children have it”—so he stood back, and in this happy frame of mind waited the award of his industry.

Mr. Price, assisted by several gentlemen of the village, examined each man’s account as rendered in by himself every day, all fairly written out by Jemmy Brady. The result was wonderful; these poor families had not only a large mess of vegetables of the best kind for their tables every Sunday, and from twelve to fifteen bushels of potatoes for their winter use, but they had cleared—first, the boys in the corner lot—twenty-one dollars each, making sixty-three dollars. This was after paying Bonny Betty a per centage for selling the different vegetables for them, and Betty was notextortionate; this yielded the boys about four dollars a month, which with the money they earned at their different employments enabled them to buy themselves two good suits of clothes, pay their parents for their board, and put a few dollars in the savings fund. But I ought to go on with the other gardens.

Next to the three boys came David Conolly—he looked so much better in health that Mr. Price did not recollect him—he produced his account; he had cleared fifty dollars. “Well done, David,” said Mr. Price, “who could have believed this?—what! fifty dollars, and such good looks! I must shake hands with you—and your wife, which is she? let me wish her joy too.”

Poor Mrs. Conolly stepped forward with her handkerchief to her eyes, and shook hands with Mr. Price, but her heart was too full to speak, though Bonny Betty punched her in the side several times and whispered to her to hold up a bit.

David Conolly, so long despised as a drunken vagabond, had undergone something of a change in his feelings too. He knew that, but for the assistance of his good son, his garden would have been overrun with weeds; and that, so often was he drunk, in the early part of the summer, when every thing required so much care and attention, that if Patrick had not turned in and helped, he would not have held up his head this day. All this came full to his mind; and he was not slow in giving his son this praise. Perhaps this was the most gratifying thing to Mr. Price that had occurred. Here, by the little he had done, was a poor creature restored to a moral sensibility, which had become almost extinct in his bosom. Here, through his means, was a husband and a father restored to the respect of his wife and child. “I am satisfied,” said Mr. Price, inwardly, “and I humbly thankthee, oh, my God, for being the means of saving this poor creature.”

Next came Larry, hitching and twisting himself into all manner of shapes—he had sixty dollars—for by good luck, as he said, his cauliflowers was bigger nor David’s; and a man had given a great price for them, to take to York; and he had planted squashes in among his potatoes, so that they took up no more room; and his little datters had helped him weed; “and so, your honour,” said he, “you see that David’s not behind me, any how, seeing he has no little datters to weed for him.”

“Plase your honour,” said Bonny Betty, whose turn came next, “just pass me by and let Jemmy Brady bring up; I’ll be better ready, being the last.”

“Why, I thought that Sammy Oram had the next lot to you,” said Mr. Price, “has Jemmy changed?”

“Yes, Sir,” said Jemmy, walking proudly up, with a decent smart dress on; and, in his nervous anxiety to show himself to Mr. Price, he had his hat on his head. His wife, however, twitched it off, and told him not to forget where he was. “But he’s scared, like, your honour,” said Biddy, dressed up as smart as her husband; “and I’ve brought you my little boy; he’s a new comer, your honour, and if your honour would not be affronted, we intend to call him Oliver Price.”

Mr. Price patted the chubby little thing on the cheek, and thanked the mother for the compliment, saying, that when his little namesake was old enough, he should be sent to school. Jemmy, with hat now in hand, brought his account—alas, poor Jemmy, his account showed only forty dollars—but eight children! “No, don’t feel ashamed,” said Mr. Price. “I have heard that you were often obliged to remain at home to nurse your wife—butwhat’s the matter, Bonny Betty, why do you look so amazed?”

“Why, sure, your honour, Jemmy’s fine clothes have crazed him. I kept the money, and sure, Jemmy, there’s more; sure you had sixty dollars.”

“Yes, you gave me sixty,” said honest Jemmy, “but can’t I write and read, and isn’t all these bills made out by myself? and did I not set down all the time I worked? and sure I am that forty dollars is all I earned any how. There’s the twenty dollars, and they’re none of mine; but to be shared wid my two little boys—shame on me for spaking of my own first, and Bonny Betty’s little Ben, to say nothing of Petey and Ody Oram, them two good little fellows. When I could not work, your honour, they all fell to, and my little garding looked none the worse, I can tell you.”

Sammy Oram came next—he could not bear to work next to Betty, so good natured Jemmy changed with him; and Sammy, after that, plucked up heart a little, offered himself to Lizzy Conolly, got married, and really improved wonderfully, for Lizzy was cheerful, and his children became very fond of her. He had forty dollars likewise.

“And now, your honour, here’s my earnings, your honour,” said Bonny Betty, stepping forward with five healthy children at her side—poor little Christie having died about two weeks before. “Here is my money,” and she opened a little box, counting out one hundred and ten dollars, all in silver.

“I’m thankful” said Larry, “that she’ll get the premium, any how.” “No, I’ve not earned all this money by my garden,” said honest Betty, “but by selling for the rest—I had that chance over ye all. If I could rightly tell how much I made by selling for you, you’d find I may be would be a great deal behind you all.”

“I see, my friends,” said Mr. Price, “that it isdifficult to tell which has made the most. I shall not give the premium to any one in particular. You have all done well. David Conolly is, certainly, most to be praised, because he has broken himself of an accursed vice.”—“I’ll never drink a drop, your honour, from this hour,” said David—“The boys,” continued Mr. Price—“but I dare not trust myself to speak of them—the gentlemen present will take care that they shall always have the best wages and the best places in their gift; they deserve it well; and, as I thought they would behave exactly as they have done, I have brought them each something suited to their present wants. As to you, Bonny Betty—seeing that you are a woman, by rights I ought to distinguish you beyond the others. You shall have your shanty and lot rent free; the rest shall pay into the hands of Daniel M’Leary ten dollars each, for the next year. I shall charge them nothing now. The gardens will be better, as the raspberries and strawberries will be ready for sale; and the year after, the asparagus will be large enough to cut. I shall then build a small market-house, and place Mr. M’Leary at the head of it. Make way there, Larry, and let the packages from the wagon be brought in.”

Mr. Price gave every one a parcel, containing a number of things necessary to the coming winter; such as blankets, coarse cloth for the children, stockings, and stuff for cloaks and coats—besides sewing cotton, pins, tape, needles, scissors; and for the boys plenty of paper, pencils, books and carpenter’s tools—the men could hardly stagger home under their pleasant loads; and the women went trotting along by their side, laughing and talking loud in the joy of their hearts. Mr. Price did not stay for their thanks, which, after the Irish fashion, they were pouring out feelingly and rapidly. All he heard, as he jumped in the dearborn, with thegentleman who owned the land, was the end of Jemmy Brady’s outpouring—“God bless him; if his son had lived, he’d, may be, in time have been as good a man as himself.” Mr. Price was very much affected; stopped with the intention of speaking to the man, but feeling unable, he rode away.

“Norah, dear,” said he, in the evening of this busy day,—“Norah, you have done being afraid of me, have you not? You may remember how unwilling you were to come near me when I first saw you.”

“Yes,” said the little girl, “I was afraid of you then, but it was not long. It was only something that Jemmy Brady said to me in the kitchen that made me not like you at first; but I love you dearly now,” said she, as she jumped on his lap and threw her arms around his neck.

“I wanted you then to tell me what Jemmy said to make you fear me, but you would not. You will tell me now, will you not?” and he pressed the little creature fondly to his bosom.

“Why, Jemmy said you were the image of my father; and that if he chose, he could make my dear grandmother very unhappy; but that he would not tell—he liked me too well to let any one separate me from him. So I was afraid, and yet I did not know why you would take me from my dear grandmother; for that was what I thought Jemmy meant.”

Mr. Price sent her to call Jemmy. When questioned, he said he firmly believed that Mr. Price’s son was Norah’s father; that he lived in the neighbourhood, very near to Sally M’Curdy; that the young man, who called himself White, fell in love with Ellinora M’Curdy, who was a beautiful girl, but too virtuous to listen to any one excepting in the way of marriage—that he finally did marry her, but under the name of White. After a fewmonths, he came to America, where he married again, and this was the last they ever heard of him. Jemmy Brady went on to observe that he came to this country about a year after Mrs. M’Curdy, and heard from them that Mr. White had married again, and that they had made up their minds never to molest him, fearing that the little girl would be taken from them. He had seen the likeness between Mr. Price and the young man who called himself White, and he said aloud—but not in the hearing of Mrs. M’Curdy—that the likeness was very strong; but he did not think, at the time, the little girl minded it.

On further inquiry, and on recollecting what his son had said in his last moments, owning that he had left a wife, and, he believed, a child, in Ireland, Mr. Price had no doubt that little Norah was his grandchild. A book, with a few lines in the title page, which Mrs. M’Curdy had preserved, recognized as his own, given to his son before he sailed, more fully proved it; but he could hardly be said to love the child more after this disclosure. He immediately acknowledged her; and glad was he that his unhappy son had left no children by this second marriage. Of course, Mrs. M’Curdy returned no more to the shanty. She lived with Mr. Price, and had but one regret—that her poor daughter had not lived to share their happiness. Both she and Norah went yearly to visit the grave under the old hemlock tree.

Here was an unlooked-for reward for his kindness to a hapless family; but as every man who does good is not to expect a grandchild to start up in his walk, he must look to other sources for compensation. Mr. Price had these likewise; for the shanty people never relapsed into idleness and dirt; but continued to improve in their circumstances. At the end of ten years, (and they passed quicklyaway,) every man was able to buy the lot of ground on which he had so long wrought. The owner sold them at a moderate price; but he more than made up for this small advance by the greater prices obtained for the rest of the land which he owned in the neighbourhood.

In consequence of the success of this scheme other landholders adopted the same wise policy, and the benefit to their property was immense. The love of horticulture opened the way to better habits and tastes among the poor of the district; and there was none so humble that had not a garden spot of their own. The ladies’ societies fled from them for ever; and the poor women blessed the day of their departure, for now they could earn an honest living by their needle.

During the ten years of which we speak, other changes had taken place, greatly beneficial to the village. A pier had been built by a company from New York, and steamboats now plied there daily. In compliment to Mr. Price they intended to call the first one that was built for the place, “Oliver Price,” but that gentleman declined the honour for the present; he said, if they had no objection, he would give them a more suitable name—“The Seven Shanties”—and that if they ever built another, of which there was no doubt, he wished it might be called the “Bonny Betty.”

They did build another, and another; and at this moment there are no less than five for the trade and pleasure of that place alone.—The Seven Shanties—The Bonny Betty—The Little Norah—The Henry Barclay, and the ——.

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