Volume 1, No. 1

Pennington's Dance / Russell... 7

Julia, like Nora had come from Ireland many years ago, however Julia met her husband after arriving in England. Julia's husband had been a widow. His wife had died barely a year before he met and married Julia. Julia often wondered why Pat had never told her about his five children before he married her, "But there you are" she would say, "the wee bairns deserve someone to mind them don't they. And not a bad bunch of kids, although the shock of it when I first met them…." In spite of Pat's attempts to clean them up before Nora met them, the five children were not easy on the eye or the nose. "The dirt Nora, and the ignorance of them. Sure they'd never been to school, can you credit it? Its all thanks to me that they turned out as well as they did."
Nora and Julia often reminisced and had heard each others stories repeated time and again. Yes Julia had been good to Fred's kids but her goodness lost some of its attraction as she continually congratulated herself on