"No, in trath! not as much as one letter have I this night!" he said slowly.
At this the Woman began to laugh, in spite of the great annoyance that was on her.
"Sure," she said, "if Mrs. Melia had a letter for us, wouldn't she have given it to you? What use would she have for it? And if she hadn't, and told you so, where's the sense in you feeling your pockets over and over? A body'd think you expected letters to grow there, the same as American apples in barrels! How could you have there what you didn't put there? But let you go on off ou'er this now! Look at the state you have the clean floor in, with the rain dreeping from your cota-mor!"
"Coming down it is, like as if it was out of a sieve!" said Michael; "and wasn't it God that done it, that I took the notion to cut the holly'n'ivy while the day was someways fine, afore I started off to the shop! Has it safe below ... so I'll just go for it now, the way we can be settling out the Crib and all ..."
"There'll no holly'n'ivy go up on these walls to-night, if I'm to be let have a say in the business!" said Mrs. Moloney. "Sich trash and nonsense! making mess and trouble for them that has plenty to do without that! And as for the Crib, let it stop where it is ..."
On the word she went back to her stool in the chimney-corner, where she always sat bolt upright, and took up her knitting, the same as if it wasn't the Christmas Eve at all. For Art, their only child, that stocking was meant. But her hands were shaking so much that she dropped more stitches off the needles than she made, and still she persevered. Big Michael looked at her for a bit, very pitiful; even opened his mouth once, as if he wanted to say something; a nice, silent person he was, very even-going in himself. But he must have thought better of it, for he only shook his head again, and turned and went off out of the door into the wild storm and darkness, with the wind howling and threatening all about the bog and country-side, the shockingest ever you knew.
And as soon as he was gone, didn't the Woman throw down her knitting, and laid her head upon her knees, and cried and cried, till her blue checky apron was like as if it was after being wrung out of a tub of suds.
"Och, Art!" she'd cry, "isn't this the queer way for you to be going on! To say you never answered the letter that was wrote to you! This very day five-and-twenty years you came here to us! as lovely as a little angel you were! The grand big blue eyes of you! and the way you'd laugh up at me and put out the little hand...! And you the only one ever God sent us! And never a word between us, only when you took the notion to go off to Dublin; sure it near broke our hearts, but what could we do, only give you our blessing! And ... and then hearing the good accounts of the way you were going on.... But it's the wife that done it all, and has him that changed...! Too grand she is, no doubt, for the likes of us! Och, grand how-are-ye! no, but not half good enough for Art! He that was always counted a choice boy by all that knew him! And any word them that saw the wife beyant in Dublin with him brought back, was no great things. A poor-looking little scollop of a thing, they tell me she is; and like as if she'd have about as much iday of taking butter off a churn, or spinning a hank of yarn, as a pig would have of a holiday! What opinion could any sensible body have of that kind of a wedding, without even a match-maker to inquire into the thing, to see was it anyways suitable or not! Och, Art! Art! it's little I thought, this day five-and-twenty years, the way the thing would be now!"