The next morning Pat went about with a preoccupied air. But all his work was done with his accustomed dispatch and skill, nevertheless.

"What is on my boy's mind?" thought Mrs. Brady. Yes, that is what she thought—"my boy."

And just then Pat looked into the sitting-room with his basket on his arm. "I'll just be doin' the marketin' now, ma'am," he said.

"Very well," smiled Mrs. Brady. "Here's a rose for your buttonhole. You look very trim this morning."

Pat blushed with pleasure, and, advancing, took the flower. The poor Irish boy had instinctively dainty tastes, and the love of flowers was one of them. But even before the blossom was made fast, the preoccupied look returned.

"Mrs. Brady, ma'am, would you care if I stopped at the lumber yard while I'm down town? I'd like to be gettin' some of their cheapest lumber sent home this afternoon."

"Why, no, Pat. Stop, of course."

Pat was encouraged. "I know I was out last night," he said. "But could I be goin' again this evenin' after my work's done? Mike's got a job on hand that I want to help him at."

"Yes, Pat."

"You see, ma'am," said the boy gratefully, "we're goin' to rig up something to put the cook-stove in so as mother will be cooler. It's too hot for her sleepin' in the kitchen."

Mrs. Brady looked thoughtful. Then she said: "You are such a good, dutiful boy to me, Pat, that I think I must reconsider my permission. Lunch is prepared. You may go home as soon as you have finished your marketing and help Mike till it is time to get dinner. We will have something simple, so you need not be back until four this afternoon, and you may go again this evening to finish what remains to be done."

"Mrs. Brady, ma'am," cried Pat from his heart, "you're next to the General, that's what you are, and I thank you."

Mrs. Brady smiled. She knew the boy's love for her husband, and she understood that to stand next to the General in Pat's estimation was to be elevated to a pinnacle. "Thank you, Pat," she replied. Then she went on snipping at the choice plants she kept in the house, even in summer, and Pat, proudly wearing his rose, hurried off.

But when Pat arrived at home and hastened out behind the shanty, the post-holes were dug. Mike had risen at three o'clock that morning, dug each one and covered it with a bit of board before his mother was up.

"And have you come to say you can't come this evenin'?" asked Mike, as Pat advanced to where he was sorting over such old scraps of boards as he had been permitted to pick up and carry home.

"I've come to get to work this minute," replied Pat, throwing off his blouse and hanging it on the sill of the open window, with the rose uppermost.

"Where'd you get that rose?" inquired Mike, bending to inhale its fragrance.

"Mrs. Brady give it to me."

"Mother would think it was pretty," with a glance at his older brother.

"And she shall have it," said Pat. "But them boards won't do. I've bought some cheap ones at the lumber yard, and they're on the way. And here's the nails. We'll get that stove out this day, I'm thinkin'. I couldn't sleep in my bed last night for thinkin' of mother roastin' by it."

"Nor I, neither," said Mike.

"Well, let's get to diggin' the holes."

"They're dug."

"When did you dig 'em?"

"Before day."

"Does mother know?"

"Never a word."

Pat went from corner to corner and peered critically down into each hole.

"You're the boy, Mike, and that's a fact," was his approving sentence.

Just then the boards came and were thrown off with a great clatter. Mrs. O'Callaghan hurried to the door. "Now, b'ys, what's the meanin' of this?" she questioned when the man had gone.

"Have my rose, mother dear," said Pat.

"And it's a pretty rose, so it is," responded Mrs. O'Callaghan, receiving it graciously. "But it don't answer my question. What'll you be doin' with them boords?"

"Now, mother, it's Mike's plan, but I'm into it, too, and we want to surprise you. Can't you trust us?"

"I can," was the answer. "Go on with your surprise." And she went back into the shanty.

Then the boys set to work in earnest. Four scantlings had come with the boards, and were speedily planted firmly.

"We don't need no saw, for the boards are of the right length, so they are. A man at the yard sawed 'em for me. He said he could as well as not. Folks are mighty good to us, Mike; have you noticed?"

"The right sort are good to us, of course. Them Jim Barrows boys are anything but good. They sets on all of us as much as they dares."

By three o'clock the roof was on, and the rough scraps Mike had collected were patched into a sort of protection for a part of the east side of the new kitchen.

"Now let's be after the stove!" cried Mike.

In they went, very important.

"Mother, dear, we'd like to be takin' down your stove, if you'll let us," said Pat.

The widow smiled. "I lets you," she answered.

Down came the stovepipe to be carried out. Then the lids and the doors were taken off to make the heavy load lighter. And then under went the truck that Andy had run to borrow, and the stove was out.

Mrs. O'Callaghan carefully refrained from looking at them, but cheerful sounds came in through doors and windows as the big boys worked and the little ones crowded close with eager enjoyment of the unusual happening. Presently there came tones of dismay.

"Pat," said Mike, "there's no hole to run the pipe through. What'll we do?"

"We'll have to be cuttin' one, and with a jackknife, too, for we've nothin' else. But I'll have to be goin' now. I was to be back by four, you know."

"Then we'll call the mother out and show her the surprise now," said Mike. "I'll make short work of cuttin' that hole after you're gone."

"Will you be steppin' out, mother dear?" invited Mike gallantly.

"You'll not be roastin' by the stove no more this summer," observed Pat.

The widow came out. She looked at the rough roof supported by the four scantlings, and then at her boys.

"Sure, 'tis a nice, airy kitchen, so it is," she said. "And as for the surprise, 'tis jist the koind of a wan your father was always thinkin' up. As you say, I'll not be roastin' no more. But it's awful warm you've made my heart, b'ys. It's a warm heart that's good to have summer and winter." And then she broke down. "Niver do you moind me, b'ys," she went on after a moment. "'Tis this sort of tears that makes a mother's loife long, so 'tis."

"Well, Mrs. Brady, ma'am, we're done," reported Pat at a few minutes before four. "Mike, he'd got up and dug all the holes before day, and it didn't take us so long."

"And is the stove out?" inquired Mrs. Brady kindly.

"It is, ma'am. Mike will be cookin' out there this evenin'. Mike's gettin' to be the cook, ma'am. I show him all I learn here, and he soon has it better than I have myself."

Mrs. Brady smiled. How Mike could do better than Pat she did not see, but she could see the brotherly spirit that made Pat believe it.

"Perhaps you had better go over again this evening," she said, "just to see if the stove draws well in the new kitchen."

"Do you mean it, ma'am?" asked the boy eagerly.

"Yes."

"Thank you, kindly. I'd like to go, but I wasn't goin' to ask. My mother says askin's a bad habit. Them that has it is apt to ask more than they'd ought to many times."

Meanwhile, up on the roof of the new kitchen in the hot afternoon sun sat Mike with his knife. He had marked out the size of the pipe-hole with a pencil, and with set lips was putting all the force of his strong, young arms into the work. A big straw hat was on his head—a common straw, worth about fifteen cents. Clustered below were the little boys.

"No, you can't come up," Mike had just said in answer to their entreaties. "The roof won't bear you."

"'Twould bear me, and I could help you cut the hole," said Jim.

"There goes Jim again," soliloquized the widow. "Wantin' to cut a round hole in a boord with a knife, when 'tis only himself he'd be cuttin', and not the boord at all. It's not so much that he's iver for doin' what he can't, but he's awful set against doin' what he can. Jim, come here!" she called.

Jim obeyed.

"You see how loike your father Pat and Moike and Andy is, some wan way and some another. Do you want to be loike him, too?"

[Illustration: Up on the roof sat Mike with his knife.]

Jim owned that he did.

"Well, then, remimber your father would niver have been for climbin' to the roof of the new kitchen and cuttin' a round hole in a boord with a knife so as to run the pipe through when he was your soize. But he would have been for huntin' up some dry kindlin' to start the fire for supper. So, now, there's your job, Jim, and do it good. Don't come back with a skimpin' bit that won't start the coal at all."

With lagging steps Jim set off to the patch of hazel brush north of the shanty to pick up such dry twigs as he could. His mother gazed after him.

"Tim left me a fortune when he left me my b'ys, all but Jim," she said, "and see if I don't make something out of him, too. Pat and Moike and Andy—showin' that you sense what they're doin' is enough for 'em. Jist that will kape 'em goin' foine. But Jim, he'll take leadin' with praise and shovin' with blame, and he'll get both of 'em from me, so he will. For sure, he's Tim's b'y, too, and will I be leavin' him to spoil for want of a harsh word now and then? I won't that. There's them in this world that needs settin' up and there's them that needs takin' down a peg. And wanst in a while you see wan that needs both of 'em, and that's Jim, so 'tis. Well, I know it in toime, that's wan thing."

Jim made such slow progress that the hole was cut, the pipe run through, and Mike was beginning to look about for his own kindling when he made his appearance.

"Well, Jim," said his mother, taking him aside, "there's something the matter with your feet, I'm thinkin', you've been gone so long. You was all but missin' the chance of seein' the first fire started in the new kitchen. There's something to remimber—seein' a sight loike that—and then you have it to think about that it was yoursilf that provided the kindlin' for it. All this you was on the p'int of losin' through bein' slow on your feet. Your father was the spriest koind of a b'y, I'm told. Only show him an errand, and he was off on it. Get some spryness into your feet if you want to be like your father, and run, now, to see Moike loight the fire. And don't be reachin' to take the match out of his hand, nayther. Your toime of fire buildin' will come."

Away went Jim. He was certainly spry enough now. Mike was just setting the blazing match to the kindling when he reached the group around the stove. At the front stood the little boys, and in a twinkling Jim had pushed them one this way, one that, in order to stand directly in front of the stove himself.

"There he goes again," sighed the widow. "'Tis a many pegs Jim will have to be took down, I'm thinkin'."