"There was Joe Carragher's daughter, from Balleek," he instanced; "you knew her well. She went over six years ago and now she 's a lady's maid in one of the big houses on Fifth Avenue. A grand position!"

"Is that so?" she repeated; her eyes had narrowed a little and she was studying him intently.

"Then there was Patrick Hagan, the brother of the captain in the Dublin Fusiliers. He 's got a saloon on Third Avenue and does a grand business."

"That's the devil's business, Willie John," his mother said quietly.

It was the first time since he came back that he had seen her without a smile on her lips.

"It's different on the other side, I tell you," Grant commented with asperity. "And there's Barney Doyle, that went over before me; he 's head waiter in one of the big places on Broadway. Do you know that fellow makes as much as seventy dollars a week in tips? Seventy dollars! Fourteen pounds!"

"His father was a great lawyer." Old Grant shook his head. "God be good to him! They called him the Star of the North."

"Fourteen pounds a week—in tips!"

Grant thought he could detect a chill, contemptuous tone in the Doran girl's voice; but he put the thought out of his head, for why should she be contemptuous? She drew her blue cloak about her.

"I think I 'll be going," she said.