"Tell us about it, Pearlie," the young Watsons cried. "Well," Pearl
began, as she hung up her thin little coat behind the door, "this Nan
was a fine, purty girl, about like Mary there, only she didn't have a
good pa like ours; hers used to come home at night, full as ye plaze,
and they were all, mother, too, scairt to death purty near. Under the
bed they'd go, the whole bilin' of them, the minute they'd hear him
comin' staggerin' up to the cheek of the dure, and they'd have to
wait there 'ithout no supper until he'd go to sleep, and then out
they'd come, the poor little things, eyes all red and hearts beatin',
and chew a dry crust, steppin' aisy for fear o' wakin' him."

"Look at that now!" John Watson exclaimed, pausing with his knife
half way to his mouth.

"That ain't all in the piece," Pearl explained; "but it's understood,
it says something about 'cruel blows from a father's hand when rum
had crazed his brain,' and that's the way poor Nan grew up, and I
guess if ever any girl got a heart-scald o' liquor, she did. But she
grew up to be a rale purty girl, like Mary Barrier, I think, and one
day a fine strappin' fellow came to town, clerkin in a store, steady
enough, too, and he sees Nan steppin' out for a pail of water one day
and her singin' to herself, and sez he to himself: 'There's the girl
fer me!' and he was after steppin' up to her, polite as ye plaze
(Pearl showed them how he did it), and says he: 'Them pails is heavy
for ye, miss, let me have them."

"And after that nothin' would do him but she must marry him, and he
was as fine a lookin' upstandin' fellow as you'd see any place, and
sure Nan thought there had never been the likes of him. After that
she didn't mind the old man's tantrums so much, for she was thinkin'
all the time about Tom, and was gittin' mats and dish-towels made.
And they had a fine weddin', with a cake and a veil and rice, and the
old man kept straight and made a speech, and it was fine. And now,
Ma, here's the part I hate to tell yez--it seems so awful. They
hadn't been married long before Tom began to drink, too."

"The dirty spalpeen!" John angrily.

"Ye may well say that, Pa, after all she had to stand from the old
man. But that's what the piece said:

"But Tom, too, took to drinkin';
He said 'twas a harmless thing;
So the arrow sped and my bird of hope
Came down with a broken wing."

The Watson family were unanimous that Tom was a bad lot!

"Tom cut up worse t