The shirr tightened into something like contempt. Hennessy looked down upon me with undisguised pity.
"Did ye ever know Leerie at all, at all, I'm wondtherin'--to be savin' things like that? Don't ye know for the likes o' her there'll be childher--Saint Anthony send them a nestful!" He crossed himself to further the wish. "An' over an' above the time it takes tendin' an' lovin' them an' rearin' them into the finest parcel o' youngsters God ever made--wi' the help o' their parents--there'll be time left to light the way for every poor, sorry soul within a hundred miles o' her. Ye can take my word for it; an' if she never did another stroke o' work so long as she lived--bein' Leerie, just, would be enough."
"You may be right, Hennessy, but it's still no way to end a book."
He came a step nearer and shook a warning finger at me. "Will ye listen? Faith, I'm wondtherin' sometimes that folk read your books when ye have so little sense wi' the endin' o' them. Don't ye know that a book that ends wi' the end is a dead book entirely? An' who cares to be readin' a dead book? Tell me that."
His contempt changed to commiseration. I might have been Brian Boru, the gray swan, the way he looked at me.
"The right way of endin' is with a beginnin'--the beginnin' o' something bigger an' betther an' sweeter. 'Tis like ye were takin' a friend with ye up a high hill--showin' him all the pretty things along the way. Then just afore ye get to the top--an' afore ye can look over an' see what's waitin' beyond--ye leave him, sayin', 'Go ye alone an' find whatever ye are most wishin' for.'"
He stopped, pushed his hat back and pulled his forelock as if for more inspiration. "Do ye see? Just be leavin' it to folk the world over. They can read in a betther endin' than ye can be writin' in in a hundthred years. An' let Leerie be as I'm tellin' ye--wi' the road windin' over the hill an' out o' sight. Sure the two of us know what she'll be findin' there; an' do ye think the readers have less sense than what we have?"
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Leerie, by Ruth Sawyer