Danny Boy Read Online Free

you love me, as I love you with all your heart and soul?’
    ‘I love you with all my being,’ Rosie told him earnestly. ‘Danny, I’d need a lifetime to show you how much.’
    ‘Then you’ll have a lifetime,’ Danny said emphatically. ‘Rosie, will you marry me?’
    ‘Oh Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.’
    ‘Then my darling, we’ll talk to your parents tomorrow evening’ Danny promised.
    But, despite Minnie’s indifference to her daughter, she had seen Rosie come home flustered time and enough and knew what ailed her. She hoped Danny Walsh had respect for Rosieand that Rosie had worn her sensible head when she was with him, for she knew well enough what could happen to young couples allowed out alone. So she was relieved and pleased that Danny came to see them and asked for permission to marry Rosie and readily gave their permission. Connie and Matt weren’t averse to this either, for they weren’t fools and had seen the way things were going for some time and the wedding was set for October 1914, a month after Rosie’s seventeenth birthday.
    Rosie began sitting by the fire each evening that she didn’t see Danny, sewing things for her bottom drawer. Geraldine was an accomplished seamstress and helped her, but Chrissie had no interest in it at all. Rosie looked at the cobbled mess Chrissie had made of the sheets she’d offered to hem and knew she’d have to unpick the stitches and begin again. She knew Chrissie had tried though and said nothing to her.
    Not so their mother. ‘Who in God’s name would marry a woman who barely knows how to thread a needle?’ she demanded, giving Chrissie a cuff across the head so hard that it knocked her from the stool. Chrissie’s face burned but her eyes remained dry. She said not a word to her mother, but once she’d left the room she whispered to her sisters, ‘Am I worried? I don’t think so. There are more ways of satisfying a man than sewing a button on his shirt.’
    ‘Chrissie,’ Rosie cried shocked. ‘Take care, Mammy would take the strap to you if she heard such talk.’
    ‘That’s why I’m not telling her,’ Chrissie said, with a defiant toss of her head and the three girls giggled together.
    But, although Rosie had help with the basic sewing, she embroidered the night gowns and pillowslips by herself, for she had a knack for it and eventually a week later, with her wedding only days away, she said with satisfaction, ‘No-one could have a better bottom drawer than me.’
    Chrissie had watched Rosie finish the last rosebud on theneck of the cambric gown, and snip off the thread and said, ‘Aye, it’s a fine nightdress right enough. And now, with all the work you’ve done on it, don’t you let Danny tear it from your back. Tell him to go slow.’
    ‘Chrissie!’
    Chrissie paled instantly. She’d not heard her mother come into the room and now she watched her approach with dread. The first slap snapped her neck back, but the second on the other cheek with the back of the hand, scored a line down Chrissie’s cheek from Minnie’s rings. ‘We’ll have no more of that sort of dirty talk. You can just be thankful your father is out.’
    Chrissie’s face with the scarlet handprint on one cheek and the other oozing blood from the deep graze had wiped the smiles from Rosie and Geraldine’s faces. Rosie wondered if she should say something – intervene, but in the past when she had tried that, it had only made things worse.
    She wouldn’t risk it and waited till her mother left the room again before reaching for Chrissie’s hand. ‘I don’t care,’ Chrissie said defiantly as tears she wouldn’t let fall, glistened in her eyes. ‘I hate her! She’s a cow.’
    ‘Hush, oh hush,’ Rosie said putting her arms around her distraught sister. ‘Never say things like that, Chrissie. Think them if you must, but never say them. Mammy would kill you if she heard. But I’ll tell you what,’ she added, hoping to turn the subject from their