The Fourth Life of Sean Donoghue by Trish Hanan (children's books read aloud .txt) 📕

him. Danny shrugged.
“But I haven’t got a great-grandson named after me and neither does Ryan,” he counter with. Claire thought that a lovely idea.
“If we have two boys, we’d love to name them Ryan and Daniel,” she beamed and the two old men who were seventy-seven and seventy-four beamed with her. Sean rolled his eyes.
“What will we name them if they’re two lasses?” he asked his wife. She thought about it for a minute.
“Katherine and Bridget for your grandmother and mother,” Claire announced and he loved her even more.
“Ah, lass, we already have too many Bridgets in this family, how about we name one of them after your grandmother too?” he said softly and she nodded.
“Katherine and Rebecca,” she said and he nodded.
“What if they’re and boy and a girl?” Sally asked and they both frowned at her. She blushed.
“They’ll be two boys or two girls, I know that,” Sean declared and it was settled. He didn’t want to think of the arguments of trying to decide to pick Ryan or Daniel, one of the old men would be heartbroken and he knew it would be Daniel because as much as he tried not to pick favorites, Ryan was his favorite and everyone, even Danny knew it.
Now that Claire had decided to show she was indeed pregnant she blew up like a whale and soon forgot what her feet looked like. She loved every minute of it and bloomed like a rose. She giggled through every moment of her pregnancy and made everyone around her happy. No one had heard of the man being barren, only the woman and this caused more than a few heads to turn. Sean figured that William may have slept with a whore and gotten some kind of disease that had caused his seed to rot. Or maybe a childhood illness had caused it.
“He did have the measles when he was sixteen and was deathly ill,” Claire informed him one night when he was rubbing cocoa butter on her belly to prevent those little stretch marks that women sometimes got when their bellies swelled up.
“Maybe that’s it then, he got a really high fever when he had the measles and his seed burned up and now he can’t produce children,” Sean said as a little light went off in his head. Claire nodded and she sighed with pleasure at his touch.
“You have magic fingers, darling,” she gushed and moaned a little when they went lower. She laughed
“Are all husbands and wives this happy?” she asked, her green eyes dark with passion. Sean shook his head and bent his head to kiss her.
“Ah, lass, only the very lucky ones,” he kissed her and she wrapped her arms around his neck. The babies in her belly chose that moment to kick furiously. Sean laughed.
“Go to sleep you little rascals,” he yelled at them while she laughed. He looked into her eyes. “They’re definitely lasses, they have the worse timing,” he teased and she bit his lips. He grinned.
The twins arrived on a hot July afternoon and Sean was present for their births, his wife insisted she couldn’t do it without him. He was more than happy to help her, Sean had always wondered how babies were born and now he could get first hand knowledge. He was very impressed with the strength women processed and knew that if men could do it and couples took turns, all families would be limited to three children. Because the men would only do it once and then never do it again, it was that hard.
“Sean, you’re never touching me again,” Claire insisted as yet another contraction came and a baby didn’t pop out. Sean wiped the sweat from her face and nodded.
“I’ll never touch you again, darling I promise,” he swore and winked at the midwife, Mrs. Jefferies, his great-great-granddaughter who laughed.
“They all say that, Granddad and I don’t blame them, childbirth hurts like hell, but it will be worth the pain once the wee babe is in her arms,” she spoke cheerfully and Claire glared at her like she wanted to kill her.
“She’s laughing, Sean, tell her to stop or kill her,” she snapped and Sean swore he would. Patsy put a frown on her face then, but looked away to hide her grin and Sally who was helping covered her mouth to hide hers. It went on for several hours and then the first of the babies, a wee little boy with Claire’s red hair and Sean’s dark, green eyes arrived, head first and who could tell who was screaming more, the babe or the mother and the first one was over.
“See the wee little boy, ah, lass, he’s beautiful,” Sean cooed to her and Claire laughed.
“It’s over, oh, thank, God, Sean, I thought I was going to die,” she sighed with pleasure and then looked down at her body. “Why’s it still big, why didn’t my stomach go down?” she asked with panic in her voice. Sean patted her hand.
“Because there’s still another baby to be born, Claire, remember, you’re having twins, lass,” he explained to her gently. She didn’t look too happy.
“You mean I’ve got to do that again?” she asked, almost hysterical and shaking her head. “I can’t do that again, Sean, you can’t expect me to do that again,” she began to cry and he wiped her eyes.
“Ah, lass, I’d do it for you if I could, but you’re stronger than you think,” Sean told her and then whispered in her ear. “Just think how jealous William is going to be when you show him your two sons, darling.” She looked at him and her bright green eyes gleamed with the challenge.
“That bastard called me barren, I’ll show him whose was barren,” she snapped as another contraction hit her, she was ready and began to push. Sean held her hands and the second baby came out feet first screaming as loud as the first one had but his mother was too exhausted to scream, she only grunted.
“It’s another boy,” Patsy announced as she held up the little one with brownish red hair and bright green eyes. Sean beamed and kissed his wife.
“We’ve got a Ryan and a Daniel, I’m so proud of you, Claire, you’re a brave, lass,” he told her and she demanded to see her boys. They made her wait until they cleaned her up and rinsed her out with red-leaf water and cleaned up the bed. They washed the babies with red-leaf water and wrapped them Ryan in a green blanket and Danny in a blue blanket although they were identical you could tell them apart. Ryan’s hair was redder and his eyes were darker green while Danny’s hair was darker and his eyes a brighter green. They were absolutely the most precious babies Sean had ever seen, he had never had twins of his own before and now he had four boys. He couldn’t have been happier and wished his dad Sam Donoghue was alive to see this, he would have been ecstatic.
Kalin and Bobby who were four and three loved the new brothers and gazed at them with wonder in their eyes.
“My babies,” Kalin announced and everyone laughed. Because there were two babies to feed Sean had gotten a wet nurse a very nice woman named Emily Brown who had just had a little girl named Wendy. Her husband Wayne and their four year-old son Henry moved into the mansion, what everyone was calling their house these days, a few weeks ago so they had a whole house full of people but it was a house full of love and happiness so no one minded. Between the two women, all three babies were kept full and happy and no one went hungry.
“My Aunt would be appalled I was breast feeding the boys myself,” Claire remarked proudly as Ryan latched onto her breast with fierce determination. Sean eyed this and laughed softly. He held out his finger and the wee little one grabbed it and held on with strong fingers.
“He’s a strong one,” he said with admiration in his voice. Claire beamed at him.
“Just like his dad,” she gushed and they kissed. Wendy walked into the room.
“I’ve feed this one and changed his diaper, he eats like a horse,” she said and giggled. Sean held out his arms and she laid Danny tenderly into them. Sean gazed down at his sleeping son and kissed him tenderly on his forehead.
“Hello, Danny, lad,” he whispered. Claire felt tears come in her eyes.
“I am the happiest woman in the world,” she whispered and they kissed. The two older boys sneaked into the room. Sean grinned at them and they crawled up into his lap. Wendy smiled at the picture they made, the beautiful man and wife and their four handsome boys.
“The Donoghues are the nicest people,” she told her husband later that night. He nodded with agreement. He was learning a lot about making plowers and the factory was making gears and wheels in anticipation of getting the rubber.
The rubber arrived in July and they brought it down from Portsmyth and Sean dyed some of it black like the tires of the bicycles he had seen in Ennis. They melted it and poured into the molds he had made forming circles with grooves on the outside to grip the ground. Then they put them onto the four wheels of the plower and everyone turned out to watch Sean ride the plower.
“Well, let’s see if this works,” Sean called out as he sat on the seat and he pressed the foot pedal and the plower jerked a bit and then took off down the road. Everyone gasped and cheered as it worked. Then Sean steered it with a turn of the steering wheel and entered a field. He flipped a lever and instantly all the wheels began to spin and began to eat up the dirt. Sean moved the plower slowly across the field and everyone walked next to him exclaiming and pointing to the neat rows of dirt left behind the steel contraption. It worked, it actually worked. Every man on the field wanted to be the one driving it.
Sean tore up two rows and then let every man watching tear up two rows. It was the funniest thing they had ever done and before they knew it, they had a giant field. Then granddad announced they were going to plant strawberries in the field because you never did get enough strawberries and everyone loved them. So they started from the beginning and added the seed attachment and the one that covered up the seeds and began again. Sean did two rows and they all gasped when it did what it was supposed to.
“My God, it works, he just planted two rows of strawberries,” Young Sean was delighted. Then every man got to do two rows and when they finished they had an enormous field of strawberries to weed but they didn’t care. The plowers worked and they had the parts to make more. Sean’s amazing invention was going to change the face of farming around the world and put Donoghue Valley on the face of the map. Sean threw a big party and they celebrated.
“My husband the great inventor,” Claire gushed and threw her arms around him. He spun her around and