“Yis, b’y; an’ that wor the biggest bit of loock that iver I wor in yet.  Two twelvemonth ago come Christmas it wor, an’ iver an’ always I had been thinkin’ what ’ud I do wid ye nixt, when Ann Dolan towld me how her sisther’s son had got a chance wid a lawyer to clane out his bit ov an office, and run wid arrants an’ sich, an’ wor to have fifty dollars a year, wid the chance ov larnin’ what he could out ov all thim big books as does be in sich places.  Thin it somehow kim inter my head so sudden like, that it’s sartain sure I am it was Michael come out ov glory to whishper it in my ear:  ’There’s Misther Booros’ll mebbe do as much for your Teddy.’  I niver spoke the first word to Ann Dolan, but lapped my shawl about me, an’ wint out ov her house with no more than, ‘God save ye, Ann!’ an’ twenty minutes later I wor in Misther Booros’s office.

“‘Good-evenin’, Mrs. Ginniss,’ says he, as ginteel as yer plaze.  ‘An’ how is yer health?’

“‘Purty good, thank ye kindly, sir,’ says I; ‘an’ its hopin’ you have yours the same, I am.’

“’Thank you, I am very well; and what can I do for you this evening?  Pray, be sated,’ says he, laning back in his chair wid sech a rale good-natured smile on the handsome face of him, that I says to myself, ’It’s the lucky woman you are, Judy Ginniss, to put yer b’y wid sech a dacent gintleman:  an’ I smiled to him agin, an’ begun to the beginnin’, and towld him the whole story,—­what Michael said to me, an’ what I said to Michael; an’ how Mike died wid the faver; an’ how I’d worked an ‘saved, an’ wouldn’t marry Tom Murphy when he axed me, an’ all so as I could kape my b’y dacent, an’ sind him to the school, an’ give him his books an’ his joggerphy-picters”—­

“Them’s maps, mother,” interposed Teddy.

“Niver yer mind, b’y, what they be.  Yer had ’em along wid the best of yer schoolmates; an’ so I towld the squire.  ‘An’ now,’ says I, ‘he’s owld enough to be settlin’ to a thrade; an’ I likes the lawyer thrade the best, an’ so I’ve coom to git yer honor to take him ‘printice.’

“At that he stared like as he’d been moonsthruck; an’ thin he laughed a little to hisself; and thin he axed mighty quite like, ‘How do you mane, Mrs. Ginniss?’ So I towld him about Ann Dolan’s sisther’s son, an’ what wor the chance he’d got; an’ thin I made bowld to ax him would he take my b’y the same way, on’y I’d like he’d larn more, an’ I wouldn’t mind the fifty dollars a year, but ‘ud kape him mesilf, as I had kep’ him since his daddy died, if the wuth uv it might be give him in larnin’.”

“And what did the master say to that, mother?” asked Teddy, with a bright look that showed he foresaw and was pleased with the answer.

“Sure and he said what a gintleman the likes uv him should say, and said with his own hearty smile that’s as good as the goold dollar uv another man,—­

“’My good ‘oman,’ says he, ’sind along your b’y as soon as you plaze; an’ if he’s as—­as’—­what’s that agin, Teddy, darlint?”