“This is Mrs. Monahan!” said Julie, briefly.
He saw that he was expected to go in and question this stout woman with an amused red face, and he would have preferred death.
“I’ll leave the matter in your hands, Julie,” he said, and hastened into his own room, positively trembling with fright.
It wasn’t long before Julie knocked at his door.
“We’ve come to a temporary arrangement,” she said. “I actually believe that woman’s glad to be rid of her child.”
Forgetting that the forlorn little child was still sitting in the kitchen, and able to hear every word.
III
Quite true that Mrs. Monahan had agreed to abandon her child almost completely. She loved Rosaleen, but she didn’t feel it necessary to have her with her; and anyway, hadn’t she plenty of others? To know that Rosaleen was living in comfort somewhere in God’s world was quite enough. She hadn’t a trace of sentimentality. An excess, even very slight, of whiskey or even of strong boiled tea, could cause Mrs. Monahan to shed tears and to shake her head with delicious melancholy over life and its pains, and she professed to look upon death as a blessed release. But all this in no way affected her actions. She resigned her lovely child to this erratic and sentimental spinster because she saw very clearly the benefits which might be obtained. But she would not even pretend to be grateful.
Later in the evening she returned as she had promised, bringing with her a bundle of Rosaleen’s effects, and she found her child sitting on a sofa in the sitting room, holding before her face a big geography book which Miss Julie had said contained interesting pictures, while behind it the tears were trickling slowly down her cheeks. She rushed at her mother like a whirlwind, and kissed her and embraced her, clinging to her desperately. Mrs. Monahan also wept, but nevertheless went away.
Miss Julie’s heart ached for the deserted little creature.