Willy Burke, or, The Irish orphan in America - Digital Repository ...

52 WILLY BURKE; OR,
Burke, this blessed night—I wouldn't be in your coat,
fine as it is, for all the money Mr. Watkins has. God be
with you, brother. We can only pray for you, an' that
we '11 do". The tears rushed to his eyes, and he hastily
left the room and the house, his heart swelling with
mingled sorrow and indignation.
It was a cold, rainy evening, and the lamps themselves
shed but a dull, dim light on the cheerless streets ; but Willy
Burke heeded not the falling rain, nor the cold, nor
noticed the bleak aspect of the city, as he passed along
with a hurried step on his homeward way. Never had
his young heart been so heavily crushed. Never had he
felt so wretched. Keenly susceptible as his feelings were,
this first instance of unkindness from his only brother
wrung his very heart. And then his mother—that best
and most beloved of parents—to hear her spoken of in the
most contemptuous manner, and to reflect that his brother,
her eldest born, had tacitly encouraged the reviler, the
mocker of that revered parent and of the faith which
should be defended and professed at the expense of all
worldly hopes and interests. Outraged in his brotherly
love, in his filial respect and affection, and in his religious
principles, the noble-hearted boy felt within him a mixture
of grief and indignation which he himself could not
have described, though it seemed throbbing in his heart
and in his brain. On he went, then, through the fastfalling
rain, nor perceived that his thin, threadbare
jacket was saturated through and through, until his
mother's anxious tenderness discovered the fact the moment
he entered the room.
" Why, Willy dear, your clothes are all wet : sure I
didn't think it was rainin' so heavy. Why didn't you go