down by the table and rest your bones. I'll have the tea ready for you
in a minute. Sit you down, too, Eileen, while I get the potatoes." She
took the tongs and drew out the potatoes, blew off the ashes, and put
them on the table. Then she poured the boiling water over the
tea-leaves, and set the tea to draw, while she took the cakeen from the
kettle.

"'Tis not burned so much, after all," she said, as she looked it over.
"Sure, we can shut our eyes when we eat it."

She drew her own chair up to the table; the Twins sat on the bench on
the other side. Grannie Malone crossed herself, and then they each took
a potato, and broke it open. They put salt on it, poured a little milk
into the skin which they held like a cup, and it was ready to eat.

Grannie poured the tea, and they had milk and sugar in it. The little
cakeen was broken open and buttered, and, "Musha, 'tis fit for the Queen
herself," said Larry, when he had taken his first bite.

And Eileen said, "Indeed, ma'am, it's a grand cook you are entirely."

"Sure, I'd need to be a grand cook with the grand company I have,"
Grannie answered politely, "and with the fine son I have in America to
be sending me a fortune in every letter! 'Tis a great thing to have a
good son, and do you be that same to your Mother, the both of you, for
'tis but one Mother that you'll get in all the world, and you've a right
to be choice of her."

"Sure, I'll never at all be a good son to my Mother," laughed Eileen.

"Well, then," said Grannie, "you can be a good daughter to her, and
that's not far behind. Whist now, till I tell you the story of the
Little Cakeen, and you'll see that 'tis a good thing entirely to behave
yourselves and grow up fine and respectable, like the lad in the tale.
It goes like this now:--"

"It was once long ago in old Ireland, there was living a fine, clean,
honest, poor widow woman, and she having two sons [Note 1], and she
fetched the both of them up fine and careful, but one of them turned out
bad entirely. And one day she says to him, says she:--

"`I've given you your living as long as ever I can, and it's you must go
out into the wide world and seek your fortune.'

"`Mother, I will,' says he.

"`And will you take a big cake with my curse, or a little cake with my
blessing?' says she.

"`A big cake, sure,' says he.

"So she baked a big cake and cursed him, and he went away laughing! By
and by, he came forninst a spring in the woods,