“Why not, indeed?” said Kitty.
But it was to herself she said it. Marg never waited for any answer, only walked off with the child. She never as much as said, “Good-evening!” or turned her head to look at Kitty, and she standing at the door with her own child hugged up to her.
“God help her, I think it’s what poor Marg must be bewitched, to go do such a thing as that! And what will old Mickey say?” thinks Kitty, turning back into the house, to lay her own baby into the cradle, and feeling lonesome that the other one was gone. Kitty was foolish that way.
And as Marg was moving home, she kept saying to herself, “What will Mickey say? But I don’t care! I’ll not give you back, even to Kitty! No! and sooner than the Union, I’ll walk the roads with you, asthore, if there should be any objections made to you being at the Furry Farm!”
And every now and then, she’d kiss it and snug it up close to her very heart. Then the baby would give a little whimper, and go off to sleep again. She never really wakened at all, indeed; only lay so still, that Marg stopped more than once, frightened, thinking it was what she had the baby smothered.
But she needn’t have been uneasy about that! And as for Heffernan....
When Marg got home, she walked straight in to where Mickey was sitting in the kitchen by the fireside. And she opened back her cloak; and the child began to stretch herself in the heat, and to laugh and crow.
Mickey that was surprised! and no wonder. He nearly jumped off his stool at the sight of the baby. And Marg was too excited and breathless at first to explain the thing. He had time to take the pipe from his mouth, and to knock the ashes out of it against the toe of his brogue, before she got to say, and she catching her breath every minute with a kind of a sob, “I’ve brought that child of Art’s here, out of Grennan’s ... and not to see her being sent to the Union beyant to be reared ... and it would be a disgrace to the name of Heffernan ... and if there’s a word of objections to be made to her, let it be said now! I can go off somewhere else.... Not a fear of me, but I’ll be well able to earn what will do the both of us ... well able I am ...” and she rocking the baby in her arms, and keeping a tight hold upon it, as if she was in dread of poor Mickey taking it from her.
Heffernan said nothing for a minute; always tedious he was; and says Marg, beginning again, “I’ve brought the child here....”
“Ora, what else, woman dear?” said Mickey.