“Ah, dear, it’s the v’ice of an angel shure. An’ though I’m not given to them kind of maytins, on account of the praist, they do be beautiful an’ comfortin’ whiles they sing. Come in. It’s Dilly Quinn that’ll bid ye welcome. For it’s the Moody an’ Sankey man.”
“Yer very good, Dilly Quinn, very good, to ask in a poor old woman; though I’m main afeared of yer mother in a tantrum.” Her voice was shrill and shaky, though she was not seventy; but poverty and hardships age people fast. A bowed and shrunken woman, with thin, white, straggling hair, watery, hungry-looking eyes, a wrinkled, ashen skin, her lips a leaden blue and sunken from lack of teeth. She had one of Mrs. Murphy’s rooms since the head of the house was safely bestowed within prison limits. Mrs. Bolan’s only son had been killed in the war, and she had her pension. Now and then some one gave her a little work out of pity.
She dropped down on the lounge. “When I heard that there hymn,” she went on quaveringly, “it took me back forty year an’ more. There was great revival meetin’s. My poor old mother used to sing it. But meetin’s don’t seem the same any more, or else we old folks kinder lost the end er r’ligion.”
She was so pitiful, with her timorous, lonely look, and the hard struggles time had written on her everywhere.
“Will you sing it for her?” Dil asked timidly, glancing up at Travis.
Some one else paused to listen and look in, and stared with strange interest at the fine young fellow, whose rich, deep voice found a way to their hearts. And as he sang, a realization of their pinched, joyless lives filled him with dismay. Mrs. Bolan rocked herself too and fro, her hands clutched tightly over her breast, as if she was hugging some comfort she could not afford to let go. The tears rolled silently down her furrowed cheeks.
The foreign part of the audience was more outspoken.
“Ah, did yez iver listen to the loikes! Shure, it would move the heart of a sthone. It’s enough to take yez right t’ro’ to heaven widout the laste taste o’ purgatory. Shure, Mrs. Kelly, it’s like a pack o’ troubles fallin’ off, an’ ye step out light an’ strong to yer work agen. There’ll be a blissin’ for ye, young man, for the pleasure ye’ve given.”
Mrs. Bolan shuffled forward and caught his hand in hers, which seemed almost to rattle, they were so bony.
“God bless you, sir.” Her voice was so broken it sounded like sobs. “An’ there’s something ’bout makin’ his face shine on you—I disremember, it’s so long since I’ve read my Bible, more shame to me; but my eyes are so old and bad, I hope the Lord won’t lay it up agen me. I’m a poor old body, pushed outen the ranks. And you get kicked aside. Ye see, ’tain’t every voice that takes one to heaven. Lord help us ’bout gettin’ in. But mebbe he’ll be merciful to all who go astray. An’—if ye wouldn’t mind sayin’ a bit of prayer, ’pears like ’twould comfort me to my dyin’ day.”