d at least
twenty in it. Her eyes were as black as charcoal, and as bright as
diamonds. She was very old; and her back was bent like a bow; and her
hair was perfectly white, and as long and fine as the finest kind of
flax; and she was so lame that she could never walk without her crutch.

She was a good woman though, people said, and knew almost everything.
She could tell when it would rain to-morrow, and when it would be fair.
She would shut her eyes, and tell you all about your friends at a
distance; describe them as plainly as if she saw them, and inform you if
anything pleasant or unpleasant had happened to them. She knew more
about curing the sick than the doctors did; and once when Andy had hurt
his foot by jumping upon a sharp stub, and it was so sore for a week
that he could not step, and it had been poulticed and plastered till it
was as white and soft as cheese-curd, Mother Quirk had cured it in three
days, by putting on to it a bit of dried beef's gall, which drew out a
sliver that the doctors had never thought of. She was always ready to
help people who were in trouble; and now, when Andy screamed fire, she
was the first to come hobbling on her crutch.

"What is burning, Andy?" she cried, as she came through the gate. "Where
is the fire?"

"In the bottom of the well!" replied Andy, laughing till his side ached.
"O, ho, ho! why don't you bring some water in a thimble, and put the
well out? O, ho, ho! Mother Quirk!"

There was fire in the old woman's eyes just then, if not in the well. It
flashed out of them like two little streams of lightning out of two
little jet-black clouds. She lifted her crutch, and I am not sure but
she would have struck Andy with it, if she had not been too lame to
catch him.

"Put the well out, ho, ho, ho!" laughed Andy, hopping away.

"I would put you in, if I could get hold of you!" said Mother Quirk,
shaking her crutch at him. "You wouldn't be dancing around so on that
foot of yours, if I hadn't cured it for you, and this is the thanks I
get for it!"

That made Andy feel rather ashamed; for he began to see how ungrateful
it was in him to play the old woman such a trick.

"It isn't the first time you've made me run for nothing, with my poor
old crutch," she went on, as he stopped laughing. "The other day you
told me your mother was sick abed, and wanted to see me; and I left
everything and hobbled over here; and didn't I find her ironing clothes
in the kitchen, as well a