The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys Part 8

"Are you doing the marketing to-day, Pat?"

"Yes, sir. Mrs. Brady give me leave."

"And what is your own idea about trading?"

"Buy where you can do the best for the money, sir," was the prompt reply.

The banker looked at him thoughtfully. He had the key to Pat's future now. He knew along what line to push him, for he was determined to push Pat. And then he said, "Buy where you think best. But did Mrs. Brady give you money?"

"She did, sir. This creditin' is poor business. Show 'em your money, and they'll do better by you every time."

The General listened in so interested a manner that Pat added, "It's because the storemen can get all the creditin' they want to do and more, too, but them as steps up with the cash, them's the ones they're after."

"And who taught you this, Pat?"

"Sure and my mother told me part of it, and part of it I just picked up.

But I'll be goin' now, or Mrs. Brady will think I'm never comin'. She'll be teachin' me to-day to make a fine puddin' for your dinner."

The first store Pat went into had already several customers. As he entered, the clerks saw a tall boy wearing a blouse s.h.i.+rt and cottonade trousers, and having on his head a broad-brimmed straw hat well set back. And they seemed not at all interested in him. The basket on his arm was also against him. "Some greeny that wants a nickel's worth of beans, I suppose," said one.

But if the clerks seemed to make little of Pat, Pat, for his part, regarded them with indifference. The sight of the General making gravy had changed the boy's whole outlook; and he had come to feel that whoever concerned himself with Pat O'Callaghan's business was out of his province. Pat was growing independent.

Other customers came in and were waited upon out of their turn while Pat was left unnoticed.

"That's no way to do business," he thought, "but if they can stand it, I can." And he looked about him with a critical air. He was not going off in a huff, and perhaps missing the chance of buying to advantage for the General. At last a clerk drew near--a smallish, dapper young fellow of about twenty.

"I'll be lookin' at raisins," said Pat.

"How many'll you have?" asked the clerk, stepping down the store on the inside of the counter, while Pat followed on the outside.

"I said I'd be lookin' at 'em," answered Pat. "I don't want none of 'em if they don't suit."

The clerk glanced at him a little sharply, and then handed out a sample bunch of a poor quality.

Pat did not offer to touch them.

"They'll not do," he said. "Have you no better ones? I want to see the best ones you've got."

"What's the matter with these?" asked the clerk quickly.

"And how can I tell what's the matter with 'em? They're not the kind for General Brady, and that you know as well as I."

At mention of the General's name the clerk p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. It would be greatly to his credit if, through him, their house should catch General Brady's trade. He became deferential at once. But he might as well have spared his pains. No one, with Pat as buyer, would be able to catch or to keep the General's trade. Whoever offered the best for the money would sell to him.

The boy had the same experience in every store he entered, as he went about picking up one article here and another there till all were checked off his list.

"There's more'n me thinks the General's a fine man," he thought as he went home. "There didn't n.o.body care about sellin' to me, but they was all after the General's trade, so they was. And now I must hurry, for my work's a-waitin' for me, and the puddin' to be learnin' besides. Would I be goin' back to live off my mother now, and her a-was.h.i.+n' to keep me?

Indeed and I wouldn't. The meanest thing a boy can be doin', I believe, is to be lettin' his mother keep him if he can get a bit of work of any sort."

With his mother's shrewd counsel backing him up, and with the General constantly before him to be admired and imitated, Pat was developing a manly spirit. When he went to live with Mrs. Brady, he had offered his mother the dollar a week he was to receive as wages.

"Sure and I'll not be takin' it, Pat," said the little woman decidedly.

To-night he had come home again, and this time he had brought three dollars with him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pat doing the marketing.]

"I told you I'd not be takin' it, Pat, and I won't nayther." Though the widow would not touch the coin, she looked lovingly at her son and went on, "It's ginerous you are, loike your father, but you're helpin' me enough when you take your board off my hands. You must save your money to buy clothes for yoursilf, for you need 'em, Pat dear. Mrs. Brady can't be puttin' up with too badly dressed help. Now don't you be spakin' yet," she continued, as she saw him about to remonstrate. "It's a skame of my own I've got that I want to be tellin' you about, for it's a comfort you are to me, Pat. Many's the mother as can't say that to her oldest son, and all on account of the son bein' anything but a comfort, do you see? But I can say it, Pat, and mean it, too. A comfort you are to me."

Pat smiled as he listened.

"Do you know, Pat," pursued his mother earnestly, "as I'm goin' to my was.h.i.+n' places, I goes and comes different ways whiniver I can, for what's the use of always goin' the same way loike a horse in a treadmill when you don't have to? Course, if you have to, that's different.

"Well, Pat, sure there's an awful lot of cows kept in this town. And I've found out that most of 'em is put out to pasture in Jansen's pasture north of the railroad. It runs north most to the cemetery, I'm told. But what of that when the gate's at this end? You don't have to drive the cows no further than the gate, Pat, dear. And the gate you almost pa.s.ses when you're goin' to Gineral Brady's by the back way up the track. It's not far from us, by no manes."

Pat's face expressed surprise. Did his mother want him to drive cows in addition to his other work?

"Now all these cows. Pat," continued his mother impressively, "belongs wan cow at a house. I don't know but wan house where they kapes more, and their own b'ys does the drivin', and that wouldn't do us no good.

The pay is fifty cents a month for drivin' a cow out in the mornin' and drivin' it back at night, and them drivin' b'ys runs 'em till the folks, many of 'em, is wantin' a different koind of b'ys. Now what if I could get about ten cows, and put Andy and Jim to drive 'em turn about, wan out and the other back. Wouldn't that be a good thing? Five dollars a month to put to the sixteen I earn a-was.h.i.+n', and not too hard on the b'ys, nayther. Don't you think 'twould be a good thing, Pat?"

"I do, indeed, mother," answered the son approvingly.

"I knowed you would, and I belave your father would. How is it you come to be so like him, Pat, dear? The blessed angels know. But you're a comfort to me. And now will you help me to get the cows? If you could get a riference, I belave they calls it, from the Gineral, for we're mostly strangers yet. You can say you know Andy and Jim won't run the cows."

The reference was had from the General that very evening, though the old soldier could not help smiling to himself over it, and the first of the week found Andy and Jim trudging daily to and from the pasture.

It was not without something like a spirit of envy that Barney and Tommie saw Jim and Andy driving the cows.

"Mother, why can't we be goin', too?" teased Barney, while Tommie stood by with pouting lips.

"And what for would you be goin'?" asked the widow. "Most cows don't loike little b'ys. They knows, does the cows, that little b'ys is best off somewhere else than tryin' to drive them about sayin,' 'Hi! hi!' and showin' 'em a stick."

The two still showing discontent, she continued: "But geese, now, is different. And who's to be moindin' the geese, if you and Tommie was to go off after the cows? Sure geese is more your size than cows, I'm thinkin', and, by the same token, I hear 'em a-squawkin' now. What's the matter with 'em? Go see. Not that anybody iver knows what's the matter with a goose," she ended as the little boys chased out of the shanty.

"It's for that they're called geese, I shouldn't wonder."

CHAPTER IX

There is no whip to ambition like success. Every day the widow thought, and toiled, and kept her eyes open for chances for her boys. "For, after all," said she, "twenty-one dollars a month is all too small to kape six b'ys and mesilf when the winter's a-comin', and 'twon't be twenty-one then nayther, for cows ain't drove to pasture in winter."

It was the second son who was listening this time, and the two were alone in the shanty kitchen.

"The days is long, and I belave, Moike, you could do something else than our own housework, with Andy here to look after the little b'ys."

"Say what it is, mother dear, and I'll do it," cried Mike, who had been envying Pat his chance to earn.