It would be hard to find a pleasanter, more friendly-looking place in all Ardenoo than Moloney's of the Crooked Boreen, where Big Michael and the wife lived, a piece up from the high-road. And well might you call the little causey "crooked" that led to their door! for rough and stony that boreen was, twisting and winding along by the bog-side, this way and that way, the same as if it couldn't rightly make up its mind where it wanted to bring you. So it was all the more of a surprise when you did get to Moloney's, to find a house with such an appearance of comfort upon it, in such a place.

Long and low that house was, and very old. You could tell the great age of it by the thickness of the thatch, as well as by seeing, when you were standing inside upon the kitchen floor and looking up, that that same thatch was resting, not upon common planks, sawn with the grain and against the grain and every way, but upon the real boughs themselves, put there by them that had to choose carefully what would be suitable for their purpose, because there were few tools then for shaping timber. So that's how the branches were there yet, the same as ever, bark and twigs and all; ay, and as sound as the day they were put there, two hundred years before.

As for the walls at Moloney's ... mud, I'm not denying it! but the thickness of them! and the way they were kept white-washed, inside and out! They'd dazzle you, to look at them; especially in the kitchen of an evening, when the fire would be strong. And that was a thing that occurred mostly always at Moloney's. For Herself was a most notorious Vanithee; and there's no better sign of good housekeeping than a clean, blazing hearth. Sure isn't that, as a body might say, the heart of the whole house? Heart or hearth, isn't it all the one thing, nearly? For if warmth and comfort for the body come from the one, doesn't love and pleasant kindness come from the other? Ay, indeed!

And now, here was the Christmas Eve come round again, when every one puts the best foot foremost, whether they can or not. And so by Moloney's. The darkness had fallen, and a wild, wet night it was, as ever came out of the heavens. But that only made the light seem the brighter and more coaxing that the fire was sending out over the half-door, and through the little, twinkling bulls'-eyes windows, as if it was trying to say, "Come along in, whoever you are that's outside in the cold and the rain! Look at the way the Woman has the floor swept, till there isn't a speck upon it! and the tables and stools scoured like the snow, and the big old pewter plates and dishes upon the dresser polished till they're shining like a goat's eyes from under a bed! Come in! Sure every one is welcome here to-night, whether they come or not!"

And still in all...!

Well, one look round would tell you, with half an eye, that something was wrong at Moloney's, Christmas Eve and all as it was. For Big Michael himself was standing there in the kitchen, cracking his red, wet fingers one after the other, and looking most uncomfortable. The wet was running down from his big frieze coat, but it wasn't that he minded. He was too well used to soft weather to care about wet clothes. Beside him upon the floor was the big market-basket, with all manner of paper parcels, blue and brown, sticking out from under the lid that wouldn't shut down, he had brought home so much from Melia's shop. But that basket had a forgotten look about it, because there beside it stood Herself, and she not asking to unpack it or do a thing with it. She was a little bit of a woman, that you'd think you could blow off the palm of your hand with one puff of your breath. As thin as a whip she was, and as straight as a rush; and she was looking up now at Michael with flaming cheeks and eyes like troubled waters.

"No letter!" she was saying; "and is it that you brought home no letter, after you being to the post! Sure it can't be but they wrote to say were they coming or not, after they being asked here for the Christmas! Sure I thought you'd surely have word to say when to expect them; and was thinking even that they might be coming with yourself! Only I suppose the little ass and dray wouldn't be grand enough for the wife! Of coorse I didn't think of her writing; she may know no better, and isn't to be blemt if she has no manners; she can't help the way she was brought up! But Art! Sure there must be a letter from him...!"

"Wait and I'll try again!" said Big Michael slowly; and then he took to feel through his pockets again for the letter their son was to have sent them. But when he had done this, he could only shake his head, so that the rain-drops fell from his hair and beard—turning brackety grey, they were, Michael being on in years.

"No, in trath! not as much as one letter have I this night!" he said slowly.

At this the Woman began to laugh, in spite of the great annoyance that was on her.

"Sure," she said, "if Mrs. Melia had a letter for us, wouldn't she have given it to you? What use would she have for it? And if she hadn't, and told you so, where's the sense in you feeling your pockets over and over? A body'd think you expected letters to grow there, the same as American apples in barrels! How could you have there what you didn't put there? But let you go on off ou'er this now! Look at the state you have the clean floor in, with the rain dreeping from your cota-mor!"

"Coming down it is, like as if it was out of a sieve!" said Michael; "and wasn't it God that done it, that I took the notion to cut the holly'n'ivy while the day was someways fine, afore I started off to the shop! Has it safe below ... so I'll just go for it now, the way we can be settling out the Crib and all ..."

"There'll no holly'n'ivy go up on these walls to-night, if I'm to be let have a say in the business!" said Mrs. Moloney. "Sich trash and nonsense! making mess and trouble for them that has plenty to do without that! And as for the Crib, let it stop where it is ..."

On the word she went back to her stool in the chimney-corner, where she always sat bolt upright, and took up her knitting, the same as if it wasn't the Christmas Eve at all. For Art, their only child, that stocking was meant. But her hands were shaking so much that she dropped more stitches off the needles than she made, and still she persevered. Big Michael looked at her for a bit, very pitiful; even opened his mouth once, as if he wanted to say something; a nice, silent person he was, very even-going in himself. But he must have thought better of it, for he only shook his head again, and turned and went off out of the door into the wild storm and darkness, with the wind howling and threatening all about the bog and country-side, the shockingest ever you knew.

And as soon as he was gone, didn't the Woman throw down her knitting, and laid her head upon her knees, and cried and cried, till her blue checky apron was like as if it was after being wrung out of a tub of suds.

"Och, Art!" she'd cry, "isn't this the queer way for you to be going on! To say you never answered the letter that was wrote to you! This very day five-and-twenty years you came here to us! as lovely as a little angel you were! The grand big blue eyes of you! and the way you'd laugh up at me and put out the little hand...! And you the only one ever God sent us! And never a word between us, only when you took the notion to go off to Dublin; sure it near broke our hearts, but what could we do, only give you our blessing! And ... and then hearing the good accounts of the way you were going on.... But it's the wife that done it all, and has him that changed...! Too grand she is, no doubt, for the likes of us! Och, grand how-are-ye! no, but not half good enough for Art! He that was always counted a choice boy by all that knew him! And any word them that saw the wife beyant in Dublin with him brought back, was no great things. A poor-looking little scollop of a thing, they tell me she is; and like as if she'd have about as much iday of taking butter off a churn, or spinning a hank of yarn, as a pig would have of a holiday! What opinion could any sensible body have of that kind of a wedding, without even a match-maker to inquire into the thing, to see was it anyways suitable or not! Och, Art! Art! it's little I thought, this day five-and-twenty years, the way the thing would be now!"