Barbara wasn’t too well-favoured, the best day she was. Anybody would
admit that much. The first cause of it,--she was purblind. You’d say, to
look at her, she was one-eyed. Brideen never gave in that she was,
however. Once when another little girl said, out of sheer spite on them
both, that Barbara had only “one blind little eye, like the tailor’s
cat,” Brideen said angrily that Barbara had her two eyes as good as
anybody, but it’s how she’d have one eye shut, for the one was enough
for her (let it be blind), to do her share of work. However it was, it
couldn’t be hidden that she was bald; and I declare a bald head isn’t a
nice thing in a young woman. Another thing, she was a dummy; or it would
be more correct for me to say, that she didn’t ever speak with anybody,
but with Brideen only. If Brideen told truth, she had a tasty tongue of
Irish, and her share of thoughts were the loveliest in the world. It’s
not well she could walk, for she was one-legged, and that one leg itself
broken. She had two legs on a time, but the dog ate one of them, and the
other was broken where she fell from the top of the dresser.
But who’s Barbara, say you, or who’s Brideen? Brideen is the little
girl, or, as she’d say herself, the little slip of a woman, that lives
in the house next the master’s,--on the left-hand side, I think, going
up the road. It’s likely you know her now? If you don’t, I can’t help
you. I never heard who her people were, and she herself said to me that
her father has ne’er a name but “Daddy.” As for Barbara,--well, it’s as
good for me to tell you her adventures and travels from start to finish.