Day she was off; leaving me for the rest of the
winter without a servant. Monaghan did all in his power to supply
her place; he lighted the fires, swept the house, milked the cows,
nursed the baby, and often cooked the dinner for me, and endeavoured
by a thousand little attentions to show the gratitude he really felt
for our kindness. To little Katie he attached himself in an
extraordinary manner. All his spare time he spent in making little
sleighs and toys for her, or in dragging her in the said sleighs up
and down the steep hills in front of the house, wrapped up in a
blanket. Of a night, he cooked her mess of bread and milk, as she
sat by the fire, and his greatest delight was to feed her himself.
After this operation was over, he would carry her round the floor on
his back, and sing her songs in native Irish. Katie always greeted
his return from the woods with a scream of joy, holding up her fair
arms to clasp the neck of her dark favourite.
"Now the Lord love you for a darlint!" he would cry, as he caught
her to his heart. "Shure you are the only one of the crathers he
ever made who can love poor John Monaghan. Brothers and sisters I
have none - I stand alone in the wurld, and your bonny wee face is
the sweetest thing it contains for me. Och, jewil! I could lay down
my life for you, and be proud to do that same."
Though careless and reckless about everything that concerned
himself, John was honest and true. He loved us for the compassion we
had shown him; and he would have resented any injury offered to our
persons with his best blood.
But if we were pleased with our new servant, Uncle Joe and his
family were not, and they commenced a series of petty persecutions
that annoyed him greatly, and kindled into a flame all the fiery
particles of his irritable nature.
Moodie had purchased several tons of hay of a neighbouring farmer,
for the use of his cattle, and it had to be stowed into the same
barn with some flax and straw that belonged to Uncle Joe. Going
early one morning to fodder the cattle, John found Uncle Joe feeding
his cows with his master's hay, and as it had diminished greatly in
a very short time, he accused him in no measured terms of being the
thief. The other very coolly replied that he had taken a little of
the hay in order to repay himself for his flax, that Monaghan had
stolen for the oxen. "Now by the powers!" quoth John, kindling into
wrath, "that is adding a big lie to a dirthy petty larceny.
