A WHITE KERCHIEF WITH M BY JANE BARLOW ILLUSTRATIONS BY CLIFTON JOHNSON RS. DEMPSEY made a patch of brilliant color on the soft green of the hillside where she sat towards noon knitting in the sun, and minding Nellie her cow. It was early May sunshine, strong enough thoroughly to dry and warm the sod it lay on, so that Nellie had to graze along in the shrinking shadows under dykes and bushes if she wished for a dewy mouthful, while her mistress could find a seat anywhere else without risk of incurring cold or rheumatism, or, more serious still, "the clothes all destroyed on me." About these she was always somewhat fastidious. This morning she wore her skirt of stout homespun, deep red like a very ripe hawthorn-berry, a shortish thick cloth cloak, blue as the smoke of her peat fire, and on her head a fine woolen kerchief, white as any mushroom awning when most freshly unfurled. The skirt was woven of yarn which she had spun herself and dyed last year; the cloak had descended to her from two generations; but the kerchief she had bought only the other day in Kenny's shop at Clonshone. This head-covering was, in fact, Mrs. Dempsey's darling vanity, and the one point upon which she inclined to downright extravagance on her own account. She would always have it of the finest texture and purest white; not even a thread of color in the border would she tolerate. As for those of bold pattern and gaudy hue, she would never so much as look at them, notwithstanding that this kind is cheaper, and by most people considered far more tasty. Besides, "them plain sort don't last clane in the house smoke while you would be puttin' them on," as Molly Moran urged one day in defense of her own choice-a large check design of a vivid orange and violet, which Mrs. Dempsey had declared "drew the sight out of her two eyes." But when frequent washings had superinduced yellowing and skimpiness, as repeated washings, however careful, will do, her reckless habit was to buy herself another, although it "stood her in every farthing of one and ninepence." Only that morning she had taken a bran-new one into wear, and the sheen of it under the sunbeams lit up the long green slope on which she was perched. From the opposite hills across the valley, a distance which blurred away the dimmer red and blue, she might have been supposed one of the district's pearlyfleeced sheep-a fleck of shimmering snow. Probably she was not aware of this particular effect; but ever since she had deftly tied the loose knot beneath her chin she had felt pleasantly subconscious of being well attired. In her opinion, that was by no means incompatible with the circumstance that she had not a shoe to her foot. To go with bare feet was her custom on all occasions except the very grandest, such as the big Christmas Fair, or an especially splendid wedding or burying. Even then she often started dangling a small bundle in her hand, and did not complete her toilet till she reached the last convenient halting-place on the way, from whence she would continue her journey, walking with a painful pride. This proceeding of Mrs. Dempsey's gave rise to much remark among her neighbors, who were of the opinion that she "was not a very poor woman at all," and "well able to go about respectable if she had a mind." The elders sometimes reminded one another that Bridget McSheehan, her mother's sister, had been "a rael ould naygur, who wouldn't have had the heart to spend a penny she could help, if money'd grown as plenty as pebbles on the say-shore. They wouldn't go for to say that Mrs. Dempsey, the crathur, was as miserable as all that come to; still, she might have it in her to be more than a trifle near." Echoes of these comments reached Norah, Mrs. Dempsey's only daughter, who took them much to heart, and all the more because they partly coincided with her own view of the matter. She agreed with Molly Moran, too, about the perishable white kerchiefs, though on that point she took good care to keep her sentiments to herself, lest her mother might imagine them uttered in a grudging spirit; whereas Norah willingly would have given the clothes off her back, or the hair off her head, or, indeed, have made any possible transfer of property, be it ever so inconvenient, for her mother's benefit or gratification. But she had no such reason to disguise her belief that her mother "hadn't any call to be goin' about a show on them, and she all the while ownin' a grand pair of shoes and stockings laid up with the tags droppin' off the laces, and the nails rustin' out of the soles, and the moths aitin' the legs into threads." Often did she urge these facts, and always without avail. Mrs. Dempsey was old-fashioned for her years, which were, comparatively speaking, not many, and she could recall the less sophis ticated days of her childhood, when in her family circle to go shod savored of luxury. She was used, moreover, to doing things her own way, having been early left a widow with three children and a small bit of land to manage as best she could—a situation which promoted independence of thought and action. Therefore she generally replied to Norah's arguments: "Ah, sure, girl alive, what 'ud ail me to be thrampin' holes in me good shoes for nothin' at all? It'ud be a sin and a shame ; and, morebetoken, I'd a dale liefer go widout them. Why, when you've got them clamped on to you, you can never tell the differ whether it's the ilegant soft mossy grass-sods and the springy stalks of the heather you're threadin' under you, or the ugly rough stones and muck of mud. Bedad, I'd as soon lose the taste of me mouth as the feel of me feet." Norah would be silenced but nowise convinced by such representations, and would renew the attack whenever she visited Larnacorry. For, to her grief, she was living, not at home, but up at a farmhouse some miles away, where laborious days earned her the rare delight of now and then possessing a few shillings to spend as she liked that is to say, on whatever she might have resolved long ago to "be gettin' the crathur, plase goodness, the next time she had a chance." Her wages were as much as a pound a quarter, and on less than that she could " "keep herself dacint," which was the most that Norah, though still on the vain side of five-and-twenty, allowed herself to aim at. Very seldom did a bit of finery beguile her into expenditure which entailed upon her the regrets of an empty-handed homecoming. On this last return she had brought with her an unusually large sum, and had entertained especially high hopes of inducing her mother to be amenable about the shoe question, which she was just then particularly anxious to see satisfactorily settled. They were, however, all disappointed. Norah actually experienced the mortification of hearing Mrs. Dempsey bid Kenny's shop-boy "reach her down them little white handkerchers like a good lad," instead of asking to be shown that pair of "wonderful comfortable boots with side elastics," whose praises had ears. been sounded suggestively in her stopped So chagrined, indeed, was Norah at the failure of her charming, that when Mrs. Dempsey appeared after breakfast, new purchase on head and half-guilty joy therein on countenance, an ebullition nearly came about. As it was, her annoyance led her to make an excuse of some needlework, instead of joining her mother and Nellie on their progress pasturewards; which seemed a willful waste, seeing that after next week she would find a woeful want of their society. For Norah was going out to America. Her elder brother, whose young wife had lately died on him, had written from Arbutus City, Ohio, begging her to come and keep house, and promising her chances of gaining by a few easy chores among the neighbors many times the wages that accrued to her from her long days of drudgery under Mrs. McCluskey's roof. These brilliant prospects, however, weighed less with her than did the forlorn plight of poor Mick and his two infant children; and even that would never have drawn her so far beyond her mother's reach if her other brother had not been just then returning home. "Wid Paddy to keep her company, sure she'll scarce miss me at all," she reflected, recognizing with a sort of humorous jealousy the notorious favoritism which had always prevailed in their little household. 66 Sure, everybody knew that Mrs. Dempsey set the greatest store in the world by her black-headed youngest son, who was the moral of all the McQueens, her own people." She had fretted terribly when he took it into his head to be off to America along with Mick, and now the expectation of his speedy return to her was a great joy, which left a substantial balance of happiness even after deducting her regrets at the necessity for her daughter's departure. Paddy reported himself to have had good luck and to be bringing back "a tidy little bit of money," which he proposed to lay out upon what he called magniloquently "the farm estate.' He predicted that they would have grand times entirely at Larnacorry. Mrs. Dempsey, as she sat now twinkling her bright needles, was forecasting this future, and embellishing it with the probability that Norah would soon persuade poor Mick "to come back home, himself and the two children, the way they'd all be comfortable together," with other such finishing touches to felicity, when a short shadow and a soft step drew near her over the grass. It was Norah, who, calculating that she could not afford these times to lose so much of her mother's society, had bundled up her sewing and followed. "Yourself, bedad, after all,” said Mrs. Dempsey, well pleased; "sure it's a sin to be sittin' pokin' your eyes out in the dark, when the sun's just meltin' himself down into blazes of light over the land. You'll work twice as fast here." "Och, you ould sinner!" Norah said, standing in front of her and eying her industry with reprobation. "How ready you are to be knittin' what you won't put a fut in yourself, if a body went down on her knees to you!" "The sock's for poor Paddy," Mrs. Dempsey explained. "The dear knows what manner of ould flitters the child may be comin' home wid on him." "I'm as sorry as anything," Norah said, "that I'll be quit before he gets here to you. It's rael contráry, the steamboat takin' to sail when his is just comin' in. I'd ha' liked to have had a sight of him, and to see the two of yous settled nicely, till I'd go wid an aisy mind." "Aisy it may be right enough, anyway," said Mrs. Dempsey. "What 'ud ail me to do anything except finely along wid Paddy, and he grown rich, too. I wouldn't wonder if we would be ownin' our six cows agin' this time next year, instead of our grass to be goin' to loss, wid Nellie, the crathur, noways able for it all, though, bedad, she does be doin' her endeavors, I'll say that for her." The possession of six cows was ever a day-dream of Mrs. Dempsey's ambitious fancy, because the privileges of her little holding included grazing for that number. "Ah, sure, now, it's just the nathur of any baste to swally all it can, and no thanks to it," said Norah, who was skeptical about any such self-denying thriftiness on the part of Nellie. "Nor it isn't as if you was like to be away over there, jewel, any great while to spake of," Mrs. Dempsey went on; "for you may depind poor Mick 'ill be ready enough to quit out of it the first minyit he gets e'er a chance of comin' home. Plase God it won't be long till I see him, and the childer, and yourself steppin' in to us safe and sound, like as if yous was just after comin' back from mass or market or somewheres dacint and raisonable." "I've twinty minds in me to not go a fut," Norah murmured, but her mother was so rapt in pleasant visions that she did not notice the protest, and she continued looking out from under the snowy eaves of her kerchief across the sunlit hill-slopes, with plans for the happy time ahead spinning before her mind's eye, while the burnished needles flickered like flashes of Lilliput lightning between her nimble fingers. A few days later, when, with dizzy brain and dazzled sight, Norah, for the first time, crept up out on the deck of the swift Atlantic liner, the first thing she noticed was that the heaving, cold-blue expanse around her showed every here and there a curved snowy crest, which somehow reminded her of her mother's folded white kerchief gleaming in the sun. And thereupon the face it had framed, and the familiar old cloak and red skirt, and the bare feet she had, alas! caviled at, presented themselves with a vividness which gave a keener edge to the desolate sense that New York was nearer than Larna corry. But through her years of exile it became her habit and solace to make the sunny green nook on the hillside the setting for all her pictures of the dearest thing she had left behind. There it was always fair spring weather, with a serene azure, lark-haunted, shining over the dewy sward, where grasshoppers were scraping on the finest fiddles in the world, and wild herbs blossomed tiny and aromatic. And always the brightest sunbeam touched the gleaming white kerchief and rested on it, like a visible omer of safety and good luck. While Norah, her daughter, went voyaging away to the west, Mrs. Dempsey was having an anxious time. She spent the first day or two in eager expectation of her son Paddy's arrival, his steamer being due at Queenstown. But a week and more passed by without bringing any news of him. He must be coming, she began to think, by the next boat; "and, sure, even so, he had a right to be here agin now, or very nearly," she reckoned to console herself. For further distraction of her mind she resorted to a grand improvement scheme which had occupied it lately. This was nothing less than the |