n and again
they made him tell all about the rescue. Of course they had to take
their daughter home, but they made Connor promise to visit them at
Palestine.
Soon after the happy parents left, a watch came by express to the Magan
homestead, and when Connor opened the hunting-case cover, after changing
its position till he could see something besides his own twisted face
reflected in it, and after wiping away the spray that would come into
his eyes, he read:
_CONNOR MAGAN._
_From the grateful parents of MINNIE RIVERS._
Was not her name a prophecy?
At the sill of the Magan homestead the flood had stopped, hesitated, and
then gone back. Maggie always said she knew it would--they always had
good luck. The little woman was happier than ever when she thought of
the whole train of people that _might_ have been thrown into the
ditch--of the cut-off legs, arms and heads, and the poor creatures
without them that _might_ have been cast bleeding on the track, if it
had not been for her faithful old Tim--and of the home with niver a
baby, and of the darlint that would have been drowned in the bottom of
the Ohio with her ears and eyes full of mud, if it had not been for her
slip of a boy.
As for Connor, he felt as if that bright-eyed girl belonged to him, and
now that he had a watch towards it, he seemed almost a ready-made
Conductor.
When the waters subsided and he went back to school, he studied with a
will. His percentage grew higher.
"Sometime," he said to himself, "I will go to Palestine. I _will_ be
_somebody_--maybe a Conductor! And a beautiful young woman with soft
black eyes will wave her handkerchief to me as I pass by in my train!
And after I make a lot of money"--how full the world is of money that
young people are so sure of getting--"after I make this money I will
bring Minnie back with me! And she will live in my house with me! And
she will say, 'Conor I am so glad you fished me out of the Ohio with
your drift-wood!' And won't _that_ be good luck for Connor Magan!"
WHY MAMMY DELPHY'S BABY WAS NAMED GRIEF.
Mammy Delphy was sitting out under the vines that climbed over the
kitchen gallery, picking a chicken for dinner, and singing. And such
singing! Some of the words ran this way:
"Aldo you sees me go 'long _so_,
I has my trials here below,
Sometimes I'se up, sometimes I'se down,
Sometimes I'se lebel wid de groun;
Oh, git out, Satan
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