By some trivial chance, she hardly knew what, Mary found herself one day conversing at her own door with the woman whom she and her husband had once smiled at for walking the moonlit street with her hand in willing and undisguised captivity. She was a large and strong, but extremely neat, well-spoken, and good-looking Irish woman, who might have seemed at ease but for a faintly betrayed ambition.
She praised with rather ornate English the good appearance and convenient smallness of Mary’s house; said her own was the same size. That person with whom she sometimes passed “of a Sundeh”—yes, and moonlight evenings—that was her husband. He was “ferst ingineeur” on a steam-boat. There was a little, just discernible waggle in her head as she stated things. It gave her decided character.
“Ah! engineer,” said Mary.
“Ferst ingineeur,” repeated the woman; “you know there bees ferst ingineeurs, an’ secon’ ingineeurs, an’ therd ingineeurs. Yes.” She unconsciously fanned herself with a dust-pan that she had just bought from a tin peddler.
She lived only some two or three hundred yards away, around the corner, in a tidy little cottage snuggled in among larger houses in Coliseum street. She had had children, but she had lost them; and Mary’s sympathy when she told her of them—the girl and two boys—won the woman as much as the little lady’s pretty manners had dazed her. It was not long before she began to drop in upon Mary in the hour of twilight, and sit through it without speaking often, or making herself especially interesting in any way, but finding it pleasant, notwithstanding.
“John,” said Mary,—her husband had come in unexpectedly,—“our neighbor, Mrs. Riley.”
John’s bow was rather formal, and Mrs. Riley soon rose and said good-evening.
“John,” said the wife again, laying her hands on his shoulders as she tiptoed to kiss him, “what troubles you?” Then she attempted a rallying manner: “Don’t my friends suit you?”
He hesitated only an instant, and said:—
“Oh, yes, that’s all right!”