A bargain was soon made. Moodie agreed to give Monaghan six dollars
a month, which he thankfully accepted; and I told Bell to prepare
his bed in a corner of the kitchen. But mistress Bell thought fit
to rebel. Having been guilty of one act of insubordination, she
determined to be consistent, and throw off the yoke altogether.
She declared that she would do no such thing; that her life and that
all our lives were in danger; and that she would never stay another
night under the same roof with that Papist vagabond.
"Papist!" cried the indignant lad, his dark eyes flashing fire, "I'm
no Papist, but a Protestant like yourself; and I hope a deuced dale
better Christian. You take me for a thief; yet shure a thief would
have waited till you were all in bed and asleep, and not stepped in
forenint you all in this fashion."
There was both truth and nature in the lad's argument; but Bell,
like an obstinate woman as she was, chose to adhere to her own
opinion. Nay, she even carried her absurd prejudices so far that
she brought her mattress and laid it down on the floor in my room,
for fear that the Irish vagabond should murder her during the night.
By the break of 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. I take
your flax, you ould villain! Shure I know that flax is grown to make
linen wid, not to feed oxen. God Almighty has given the crathers a
good warm coat of their own; they neither require shifts nor
shirts."
"I saw you take it, you ragged Irish vagabond, with my own eyes."
"Thin yer two eyes showed you a wicked illusion. You had betther
shut up yer head, or I'll give you that for an eye-salve that shall
make you see thrue for the time to come."
Relying upon his great size, and thinking that the slight stripling,
who, by-the-bye, was all bones and sinews, was no match for him,
Uncle Joe struck Monaghan over the head with the pitchfork. In a
moment the active lad was upon him like a wild cat, and in spite of
the difference of his age and weight, gave the big man such a
thorough dressing that he was fain to roar aloud for mercy.
"Own that you are a thief and a liar, or I'll murther you!"
"I'll own to anything whilst your knee is pressing me into a
pancake. Come now - there's a good lad - let me get up." Monaghan felt
irresolute, but after extorting from Uncle Joe a promise never to
purloin any of the hay again, he let him rise.
"For shure," he said, "he began to turn so black in the face,
I thought he'd burst intirely."
The fat man neither forgot nor forgave this injury; and though he
dared not attack John personally, he set the children to insult and
affront him upon all occasions.
