And then the door opened, and a chill, wet wind blew in, causing him to start up out of his chair. He looked to see who it was that thus broke upon his reveries—and it was a woman! Now, a woman had never been in Malachi Nolan’s place before. It was a thing he could never tolerate, if he could ever imagine it even, and he hastily glanced around to see how many men were at the bar, and who they were. His face showed positive alarm. But the woman entered. She was accompanied by a boy, who slouched in behind her, shutting the door at her solicitous command, and halted there, hanging his head. His eyes shifted suspiciously under the hat brim that shadowed his sallow, prematurely wrinkled face; his lips curled in an evil sneer that seemed habitual.
The woman fluttered her shawl about her shoulders, clutched it to her thin breast with one hand, while the other she stretched forth with a blessing, as it were, for Malachi, and as she spoke, her seamed and scarred old Irish face, bleached in the steam of many wash-days and framed in withered black bonnet strings, glowed with the light of mother-love.
“Praise be, Mal’chi Nol’n,” she began, in a high voice that immediately stifled the clinking of glasses and the laughter behind the partition. “May God bless ye—ye’re th’ foinest man in th’ whole town! To think of yer l’avin’ th’ laad out th’ way ye did—an’ so soon afther me havin’ th’ impidence to ask ye, too—shure a mither’s blessin’ an’ th’ blessin’ of th’ Vargin’ll be on ye fer gettin’ th’ paardon fer ’im. Shtep up here, Jamesy, and t’ank Misther Nol’n yersilf—he’s th’ best man—”
“Aw, tut, tut, tut, now, Misthress McGlone,” said Malachi, his face flaming with something more than the exertion of craning his neck to peer behind the partition, “tut, tut, now, don’t be goin’ on like that.”
But the woman, brave in the one subject upon which she could dispute the alderman, persisted:
“Shure, Mal’chi Nol’n, ye know it yersilf—shtep up here, Jamesy, an’ make yer t’anks to ’im. Th’ laad’s a bit bashful, ye must excuse ’im, sor, he’s th’ best b’y ever lived, though it’s mesilf says it p’hat oughtn’t to.”
The boy still hung back, but the old woman hitching up the shawl that was shamelessly revealing the moth-eaten waist she wore, plucked him by the sleeve, and dragged him to the rail that separated them from Malachi. The boy jerked away from his mother’s grasp, yet lifted his unsteady eyes for an instant to blurt out:
“Well, I’m much obliged, see?”
And then, as if ashamed of so much politeness, he hung his head and squeezed the toe of his shoe between the spokes of the railing. The old woman folded her arms in the shawl and gazed on him with a fond smile that showed the few loose, yellow teeth that always wobbled in their gums when she spoke. Presently she turned to Malachi again:
“Ye mustn’t think haard o’ him, Misther Nol’n, he’s a bit back’ard shp’akin’ to th’ loikes o’ ye, ye moind, but he’s a good b’y, an’ he’d never got into throuble if it hadn’t been for this bad comp’ny he be’s dhragged into. Shure, he niver shtays out later’n tin o’clock o’ noights widout tellin’ me p’here he’s been. This afthernoon Oi was shcrubbin’ awaay all alone, an’ who should come in all o’ a suddint but him, bless th’ b’y, an’ saay, ‘Ma,’ he says, ‘Alderman Nol’n got me a paardon an’ Oi—’”