“Poor little thing! It must have been very frightened!”
Mrs. Conolly stared, and, in all her misery, began to laugh; “May the Lord love ye, Miss!” she said compassionately yet admiringly, “May ye never grow grey!”
The difficulties of distribution were many, not the least being that of steeling my mother’s heart, and keeping her doles in some reasonable relation to her resources. I should like to try to give some idea of one of these gatherings. Lists of those in most immediate need of help had been prepared, I do not now remember by whom, and, in the majority of cases, the names given were those of the males of the respective households. Therefore would my mother, standing tall and majestic in the middle of the big, dark, old kitchen at Drishane, her list in her hand, certain underlings (usually her daughters and the kitchenmaid) in attendance, summon to her presence—let us say—“John Collins, Jeremiah Leary, Patrick Driscoll.” (These are names typical of this end of West Carbery, and the subsequent proceedings, like the names, may be accepted in a representative sense.)
The underling, as Gold Stick-in-Waiting, would then advance to the back door, and from the closely attendant throng without would draw, as one draws hounds in kennel, but with far more difficulty, the female equivalents of the gentlemen in question.
“Now, John Collins,” says my mother (who declared it confused her if she didn’t stick to what was written in the list), addressing a little woman, the rags of whose shrouding black shawl made her look like the Jackdaw of Rheims subsequent to the curse, “Now, John Collins, here’s your ticket. Is your daughter better?”
“Why then she is not, your Honour, Ma’am,” replies John Collins in a voluble whine, “only worse she is. She didn’t ate a bit since.” John Collins pauses, removes a hairpin from her back hair, and with nicety indicates on it a quarter of an inch. “God knows she didn’t ate that much since your Honour seen her; but sure she might fancy some little rarity that yourself’d send her.”
There follow medical details on which I do not propose to dwell. My mother, ever a mighty doctor before the Lord, prescribes, promises “a rarity,” in the shape of a rice pudding, and John Collins, well satisfied, swings her shawl, yashmak-wise, across her mouth, and pads away on her bare feet.
“Patrick Driscoll!”
Patrick Driscoll, bony and haggard, the hood of her dark cloak over her red head, demands an extra quantity, on the plea of extra poverty.
She is asked why her husband does not get work.