Chapter II. Where East Meets West - Page 2

been able to resist the Galician invasion. It had not escaped Mrs. Fitzpatrick's eye nor her kindly heart, as Paulina moved in and out about her duties, that she would ere long pass into that mysterious valley of life and death where a woman needs a woman's help; and so when the hour came, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, with fine contempt of "haythen" skill and efficiency, came upon the scene and took command. It took her only a few moments to clear from the house the men who with stolid indifference to the sacred rights of privacy due to the event were lounging about. Swinging the broom which she had brought with her, she almost literally swept them forth, flinging their belongings out into the snow. Not even Rosenblatt, who lingered about, did she suffer to remain.

"Y're wife will not be nadin' ye, I'm thinkin', for a while. Ye can just wait till I can bring ye wurrd av y're babby," she said, pushing him, not unkindly, from the room.

Rosenblatt, whose knowledge of English was sufficient to enable him to catch her meaning, began a vigorous protest:

"Eet ees not my woman," he exclaimed.

"Eat, is it!" replied Mrs. Fitzpatrick, taking him up sharply. "Indade ye can eat where ye can get it. Faith, it's a man ye are, sure enough, that can niver forget y're stomach! An' y're wife comin' till her sorrow!"

"Eet ees not my--" stormily began Rosenblatt.

"Out wid ye," cried Mrs. Fitzpatrick, impatiently waving her big red hands before his face. "Howly Mother! It's the wurrld's wonder how a dacent woman cud put up wid ye!"

And leaving him in sputtering rage, she turned to her duty, aiding, with gentle touch and tender though meaningless words, her sister woman through her hour of anguish.

In three days Paulina was again in her place and at her work, and within a week her household was re-established in its normal condition. The baby, rolled up in an old quilt and laid upon her bed, received little attention except when the pangs of hunger wrung lusty protests from his vigorous lungs, and had it not been for Mrs. Fitzpatrick's frequent visits, the unwelcome little human atom would have fared badly enough. For the first two weeks of its life the motherly-hearted Irish woman gave an hour every day to the bathing and dressing of the babe, while Irma, the little girl of Paulina's household, watched in wide-eyed wonder and delight; watched to such purpose, indeed, that before the two weeks had gone Mrs. Fitzpatrick felt that to the little girl's eager and capable hands the baby might safely be entrusted.

"It's the ould-fashioned little thing she is," she confided to her husband, Timothy. "Tin years, an' she has more sinse in the hair outside av her head than that woman has in the brains inside av hers. It's aisy seen she's no mother of hers--ye can niver get canary burrds from owls'