'There's that long-legged McMurray lad again; scouting after Mary, I'll be bound,' said her mother, all unawares.
But it was not Mary that he came for, though she married him just the same, and came out to America with their children some years after her sister's lone pilgrimage.
The intrusion of Jerry McMurray signaled the grounding of her dream-bark on the shoals of reality. Who cared about the cut-and-dried life of a grown woman? Enchantment now lay behind her, and, if the intervals between periods of pain permitted, she again turned an expectant face toward the old childish visions. Sometimes she could make the trip twice over without being overtaken by suffering. But her intervals of comfort grew steadily shorter; frequently she was interrupted before she could get rightly launched on her delight. And always there seemed to be one vision more illusive than the rest which she particularly longed to recapture. At last, chance words of Anna's put her on its trail in this wise.
When she was not, as her niece said, 'in her trance, wool-gathering' Anna did her best to distract her, sending the children in to ask 'would she have a sup of tea now,' or a taste of wine jelly. One day, after the invalid had spent a bad night, she brought in her new long silk coat for her aunt's inspection, for the old woman had always been 'tasty' and 'dressy,' and had made many a fine gown in her day. The sharp old eyes lingered on the rich and truly striking braid ornament that secured the loose front of the garment.
'What's that plaster?' she demanded, disparagingly.
Anna, inclined to be wroth, retorted: 'I suppose you'd be preferring one o' them tight ganzy [sweater] things that fit the figger like a jersey, all buttoned down before.'
A sudden light flamed in the old face. 'I have it!' she cried. ’Tis what I've been seeking this good while. ’Twill come now—the red coat! I must be getting back to the beginning.'
With that, she was off, relaxing and composing herself, as if surrendering to the spell of a hypnotist.
To reach any desired picture in her gallery, she must start at the outset. Then they followed on, in due order—all that procession of little girls: pink clad, blue-print clad, bare-legged or brogan-shod; flirting their short skirts, plaiting their heavy braids. About half way along, a new figure asserted itself—a girl of nine or ten, who twisted this way and that before a blurred bit of mirror and frowned at the red coat that flapped about her heels,—bought oversize, you may be sure, so that she shouldn't grow out of it too soon. The sleeves swallowed her little brown hands, the shoulders and back were grotesquely sack-like, the front had a puss [pout] on it.
'’Tis the very fetch of Paddy the gander I am in it. I'll not be wearing it so.' She frowned with sudden intentness. 'Could I be fitting it a bit, I wonder, the way mother does cut down John's coats for Martin?'