“Oh, come!” protested a carelessly good-natured companion.  “That’s no fun.  But here—­look out for the other double-runner!  Now we go, hurray!”

And, presto, they whizzed by, without another thought of the aged creature toiling up the ascent.  No one appeared to have time to help her.

Presently, however, she heard a firm, light step behind her.  The next moment a pair of merry brown eyes peered under the umbrella; a face as round and ruddy as one of her best Baldwins beamed upon her with the smile of old friendship, and a gay, youthful voice cried out: 

“Good afternoon, Missis Barry!  It’s hard work getting on to-day, isn’t it?”

A singularly gentle expression lighted up the apple-woman’s weather-beaten features as she recognized the little fellow in the handsome overcoat, who was evidently returning from an errand, as he carried a milk can in one hand while drawing a sled with the other.

“Indade an’ it is, Masther Tom!” she replied, pausing a second.

“Let us see if we can’t manage differently,” he went on, taking her burden and setting it upon the sled.  “There, that is better.  Now give me your hand.”

She had watched him mechanically; but, thus recalled to herself, she answered hastily: 

“Oh, thank ye kindly, sir!  It’s too much for ye to be takin’ this trouble; but I can get along very well now, with only the umbrelly to carry.”

“No trouble at all,” said he.  “Look, then,—­follow me; I’ll pick out the best places for you to walk in,—­the snow is drifting so!”

He trudged on ahead, glancing back occasionally to see if the basket and camp-seat were safe, or to direct her steps,—­as if all this were the most natural thing in the world for him to do, as in truth it was; for, though he thought it a great joke that she should call him “sir,” will not any one admit that he deserved the title which belongs to a gentleman?  He and Widow Barry had been good friends for some time.

“Sure, an’ didn’t he buy out me whole supply one day this last January?” she would say.  “His birthday it was, and the dear creature was eleven years old.  He spent the big silver dollar his grandfather gave him like a prince, a treatin’ all the b’ys of the neighborhood to apples an’ peanuts, an’ sendin’ me home to take me comfort.”

Tom, moreover, was a regular patron of “the stand.”  He always declared that “she knew what suited him to a T.”  During the selection he was accustomed to discuss with her many weighty questions, especially Irish politics, in which they both took a deep if not very well-informed interest.

“Guess I’ll have that dark-red one over there.  Don’t you think Mr. Gladstone is the greatest statesman of the age, Missis Barry?—­what?  That other one is bigger?  Well!—­and your father knew Daniel O’Connell you say?—­ah, I tell you that’s a fine fellow!”

Whether he meant the patriot or the pippin it might be difficult to determine.  This, however, is but a specimen of their conversation.  Then in the end she would produce the ripest and rosiest of her stock—­which she had been keeping for him all the while,—­and, leaving a penny in her palm, he would hurry away in order to reach St. Francis’ School before the bell rang.