seven dollars and eighty-four cents.

Patty allowed herself, after some slight protest, to be drawn to the
door of the Murphy domicile. She was not in an affable mood, and a call
upon the Murphys required a great deal of conversation. They found the
family hilariously assembled in an over-crowded kitchen. The entire
dozen children babbled at once, shriller and shriller, in a vain
endeavor to drown each other out. A cabbage stew, in progress on the
stove, filled the room with an odorous steam. Shoved into a corner of
the hearth, was poor old Gramma Flannigan, surrounded by noisy, pushing
youngsters, who showed her gray hairs but scant consideration. The girls
admired the new baby, while Yolanda and Richard Harding crawled over
their laps with sticky hands. Mrs. Murphy, meanwhile, discanted in a
rich brogue upon the merits of "Coothbert St. Jawn" as a name. She liked
it, she declared, as well as any in the list. It sure ought to bring
luck to a child to carry the name of two saints. She thanked the young
ladies kindly.

Patty left Conny and Priscilla to carry off the social end of the call,
while she squeezed herself onto the woodbox by Gramma Flannigan's chair.
Mrs. Murphy's mother was a pathetic old body, with the winning speech
and manners of Ireland a generation ago. Patty found her the most
remunerative member of the household, so far as interest went. She
always liked to get her started with stories of her girlhood, when she
had been a lady's maid in Lord Stirling's castle in County Clare, and
young Tammas Flannigan came and carried her off to America to help make
his fortune. Tammas was now a bent old man with rheumatism, but in his
keen blue eyes and Irish smile, Gramma still saw the lad who had courted
her.

"How's your husband this winter?" Patty asked, knowing that she was
taking the shortest road to the old woman's heart.

She shook her head with a tremulous smile.

"I'm not hearin' for four days. Tammas ain't livin' with us no more."

"It's a pity for you to be separated!" said Patty, with quick sympathy,
not realizing on how sore a subject she was touching.

The flood gates of the old woman's garrulity broke down.

"With Ursuly an' Ger-r-aldine growin' oop an' havin' young min to wait
on thim, 'twas needin' a parlor they was, an' they couldn't spare the
room no longer for me'n Tammas. So they put me in the garret with the
four gurrls, an' Tammas, he was sint oop the road to me son Tammas.
Tammas's w