Page:Shiana - Peadar Ua Laoghaire.djvu/29

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SHIANA
15
Abbie.—See how well Sheila settles herself near Kate without being afraid that she will be pinched!
Sheila.—Whisper, Kate! What is his name?
Kate.—It is Edmund.
Peg.—And his father is Edmund. This is young Edmund—Edmund ōg[1] O'Flynn. It is a fine name, Kate. I congratulate you.
Nora.—And I congratulate Shiana, Peg, because he got the purse, with leave to draw out of it. But how did he part with the vagabond? Or did he part with him at all?
Sheila.—I'm afraid he didn't part well with him.

Peg.—He didn't part with him until they reached Shiana's house. They had hardly turned their faces homeward when Shiana saw the child again with the loaf under his arm, and he was in the same childish form as when he saw him first. He looked very gratefully at Shiana, and then fled out of his sight.

Not long after that, Shiana saw the barefooted woman, and she also looked at him very thankfully, and she opened her right hand so that he saw the shilling there in the middle of her palm, and then she fled from his sight just as the child had done.

After another while Shiana saw, walking on the road out before him, the poor man to whom he had given the first shilling. The poor man's back was turned to him, but even so he knew him quite well.

"I wonder," said Shiana to himself, "if he has kept the shilling I gave him, as the woman kept hers, and as the child kept the loaf."

  1. óg, young.