His mother broke down, and could toil no longer. Mrs. Drogan, who lived downstairs, began to come up with her mending, and sit between the bed and the window. Nora was clever, for so young a girl; but she stumbled a great deal in her roomy charity boots, and had to be scolded for awkwardness by Mrs. Drogan, who had brought up sixteen rebels, and was disposed to command. As for Winny and Dan, they made a noise, and therefore had to be exiled to the street, foul and dangerous as it was, almost all day, while the invalid slept the sleep of utter exhaustion. It occurred often to Hughey, and with increasing force, that to secure a future good, he was doing a very vicious wrong; that it would be far better for his mother to have the money now, to provide comforts and make her well, than for her to do without it now, and be too feeble in consequence to enjoy it when it would come, all in a lump. Heavy and sharp was this dilemma to the little fellow, as he labelled the great bales, or set Mr. Hoggett's dusted ledgers back on their shelves. "Phwhat ought I be doin'?" he would groan aloud, when he was alone. If he confessed to his mother, and handed over hereafter the total of his wages, there was an end to the big income sprouting and budding wondrously at Belfast, the income which would be hers yet, with ever so little patience. But if he should not confess, and, meanwhile, if she should not recover,--what would all the world's wealth be then to poor Hughey?
October was damp and dispiriting; Mrs. O'Kinsella coughed more, but apparently suffered little. Hughey still brought her, week by week, his pittance of a shilling and sixpence. Ill as she was, her alert instinct divined that something ailed him; she pitied him, and worried about him, and kissed his tears away with a blessing, very often. Doctor Nugent was called in for the first time, one rainy noon. He told Mrs. Drogan, laconically, that his patient was going to die, and stopped her gesture of remonstrance. "Say nothing to those children of hers," he added, aside, on the threshold; "there is no immediate need of it, and the eldest looks melancholy enough without it."
But the eldest was at his elbow. With a still ardor painful to see, he raised himself close to the tall doctor, and whispered into his ear. "Phwhat wud save me mother? Wudn't money do it, MONEY?" The boy looked so thrillingly, impressively earnest that the doctor rose to the occasion. "Perhaps! That is, a winter in France or Italy might delay the end. But dear me! how on earth--" His voice wavered, and he hurried down.